My f23a4 is old and tired.

[GrubbyHonda]

My car is a 2000 accord with the automatic f23a4. Instead of swapping in another single slam. how much of a pain is it to swap in an f20b or h22? i dont care if its auto to be honest. can i use my current auto f23a4 trans. i just want a healthier fresher motor. not a race car.

do i need to swap harness and ecu for either of those engines?

 

[h22accordcoupe]

Well, the h22 bolts to the f23 manual tranny, so I'd guess it does to the auto too, and I guess all you need to change as far as mounts is the driver side bracket that bolts to the block post mount. I say I guess because I'm waiting on a bracket from innovative mounts (20211-SB) but I did call Innovative and talk to a guy there who said it will work with the oem honda chassis mount. (For now my setup was rigged by someone previously drilling the accord arm to fit the h22 post mount, which is too ghetto to remain on the car.) But all 4 mounts are still oem honda rubber, so it's not an immature vibrating car like you get with poly mounts. My ecu is a chipped p28, with the f23 harness and an obd1 to obd2 harness adapter. Things annoying me currently are my A/C and cooling fans not working, neither is my temp gauge, I'll figure that out later I guess. But it's almost a bolt in swap, and in my opinion they should have sold the accord with an h22 option, and just not manufactured the donkey faced 97-01 prelude. With the h22, it has enough power and responsiveness to be kind of fun to drive, even with the longer geared f23 manual tranny. Good highway gearing and it's only 1 shift to 80mph with that tranny. I actually prefer that over the lower h22 tranny gearing.

 

[GrubbyHonda]

Well, the h22 bolts to the f23 manual tranny, so I'd guess it does to the auto too, and I guess all you need to change as far as mounts is the driver side bracket that bolts to the block post mount. I say I guess because I'm waiting on a bracket from innovative mounts (20211-SB) but I did call Innovative and talk to a guy there who said it will work with the oem honda chassis mount. (For now my setup was rigged by someone previously drilling the accord arm to fit the h22 post mount, which is too ghetto to remain on the car.) But all 4 mounts are still oem honda rubber, so it's not an immature vibrating car like you get with poly mounts. My ecu is a chipped p28, with the f23 harness and an obd1 to obd2 harness adapter. Things annoying me currently are my A/C and cooling fans not working, neither is my temp gauge, I'll figure that out later I guess. But it's almost a bolt in swap, and in my opinion they should have sold the accord with an h22 option, and just not manufactured the donkey faced 97-01 prelude. With the h22, it has enough power and responsiveness to be kind of fun to drive, even with the longer geared f23 manual tranny. Good highway gearing and it's only 1 shift to 80mph with that tranny. I actually prefer that over the lower h22 tranny gearing.

by chipped ecu, do you mean crome? which ecu can i get where i can get hondata on it. Im a k series guy and never messed with B or H/F series. so this is harder to learn that all my kseries stuff lol. im assuming the gears from my accord will be stupid long with an h22/f20b but its better then my f23a4 lol. i read that a guy, the only thing he did was use his f23 harness and just cut off the end where the distrubtor is and soldered on the h22 pig tails.

 

[h22accordcoupe]

With my p28, the guy just soldered in a socket and plugged a chip into it. You can get chips with basemaps or whatever from places like xenocron. I really should upgrade that and go with something like crome or hondata, I know my motor is not tuned optimally. I've been out of the honda game for like 10 years, so the k series stuff is all new to me. As far as the distributor, it depends on what year h22 it is. The h22a1 uses an obd1 distributor, the h22a4 (97+) uses a crank angle sensor (4 wires) down at the front of the crankshaft, behind the crank pulley. There is a lot of confusing info out there about that. I believe you can pull the wires out of the f23 harness and re route them up to the h22a1 distributor, and then solder the right connector on at the end, but I've never done it.
With my setup being an h22a4, the f23 harness plugs into the crank sensor, but the distributor plug had to be swapped. Some guys say the ecu needs to have the same distributor it was meant for, like an obd1 ecu needs an obd1 distributor, not the obd2 separate crank angle sensor setup, (and of course no cut or messed up or unshielded wiring), I don't know.

 

[GrubbyHonda]

With my p28, the guy just soldered in a socket and plugged a chip into it. You can get chips with basemaps or whatever from places like xenocron. I really should upgrade that and go with something like crome or hondata, I know my motor is not tuned optimally. I've been out of the honda game for like 10 years, so the k series stuff is all new to me. As far as the distributor, it depends on what year h22 it is. The h22a1 uses an obd1 distributor, the h22a4 (97+) uses a crank angle sensor (4 wires) down at the front of the crankshaft, behind the crank pulley. There is a lot of confusing info out there about that. I believe you can pull the wires out of the f23 harness and re route them up to the h22a1 distributor, and then solder the right connector on at the end, but I've never done it.
With my setup being an h22a4, the f23 harness plugs into the crank sensor, but the distributor plug had to be swapped. Some guys say the ecu needs to have the same distributor it was meant for, like an obd1 ecu needs an obd1 distributor, not the obd2 separate crank angle sensor setup, (and of course no cut or messed up or unshielded wiring), I don't know.

lol damn. yeah the guy im talking about had an h22a4. i guess thats the one i should look for. which honda has the p28?

 

[h22accordcoupe]

The p28 if I remember correctly is from the 92-95 civic, and it doesn't have a provision for knock control or for the 2 stage intake butterfly setup on the h22. I believe the integra gsr ecu 94-95 is the p72 and does have that functionality. I'm not too knowledgeable on the ecu's myself. About the only thing I've done to an ecu is convert an obd1 integra ls ecu (p75) to run my vtec b series with a kit from xenocron like 10 years ago. I don't even remember how I did it. Lol. I just want to know if I can get my a/c to work with the p28 now. I have read that if you have an h22a4 & want to keep it stock, the 96 prelude ecu is the one to get because it's set up right out of the box, & it doesn't have the immobilizer thing in it like all the newer ones do. I have a lot more questions about ecu's than answers though. For example, why can't anyone program the obd2 f23 accord ecu to run the h22? On so many other cars, you can just plug something into the obd2 port & start tuning away. Isn't that how the K series ecu's are?

 

[GrubbyHonda]

The p28 if I remember correctly is from the 92-95 civic, and it doesn't have a provision for knock control or for the 2 stage intake butterfly setup on the h22. I believe the integra gsr ecu 94-95 is the p72 and does have that functionality. I'm not too knowledgeable on the ecu's myself. About the only thing I've done to an ecu is convert an obd1 integra ls ecu (p75) to run my vtec b series with a kit from xenocron like 10 years ago. I don't even remember how I did it. Lol. I just want to know if I can get my a/c to work with the p28 now. I have read that if you have an h22a4 & want to keep it stock, the 96 prelude ecu is the one to get because it's set up right out of the box, & it doesn't have the immobilizer thing in it like all the newer ones do. I have a lot more questions about ecu's than answers though. For example, why can't anyone program the obd2 f23 accord ecu to run the h22? On so many other cars, you can just plug something into the obd2 port & start tuning away. Isn't that how the K series ecu's are?

yeah i hear you. yea k series ecu, you just keep your own k series ecu and get hondata for it. if you want hondata for a k20z1 then you get the harness and o2 sensors and the k20a2 ecu.

 

[GrubbyHonda]

can i replace my f23a4 with an f23a1 and still use the same wiring harness and f23a4 ecu?

 

[Rusty Accord]

can i replace my f23a4 with an f23a1 and still use the same wiring harness and f23a4 ecu?

I think so, because both are VTEC equipped. Now if you had an F23A5, then you couldn't swap it unless you had the ECU and the harness for an F23A1 *common" version of these motors.

 

[Accordx]

I'd imagine you could get away with an f23a1 without a new ecu because they're so similar