My ek has a d15b engine and when accelerating in first the car will sputter (the sound of a wrx is the best way to describe it) and then the rpm's will shoot down to almost stalling. At this time I shift the car into second so I don't stall the car. I have replaced the spark plugs, wires, rotor, cap within a year. Also i had to replace a 5 month old catalytic converter because it was rattling extremely loud and I replaced the 02 sensor 2 months ago. I think it might possibly be the distributor. Any suggestions on what it could be?

 

i might be talking out of my *** but are you sure the computer is okay

im having some idle problems and its completely due to the computer

 

Could be but how would I know if the ecu is bad or not? just find another ecu i guess? i have a 1.6 acura el ecu in it right now (came with the car)

 

what plugs did you use when you replaced em? if some cheap bosche ones try replacing with NGK.

 

sorry i forgot to mention that, spark plugs are ngk same with the wires, rotor and cap were bought from honda...

 

How does the car sound when idling? Did you just do this swap recently?

 

the low rpm could be the iac valve. take it off, and spray it with brake cleaner. sputtering i dont know...

 

^^ cleaned that
when idling it will sit at just under 1000 then sometimes it will start to really chug and then right before it will stall the rpms will go up again... could that be the ecu?? and the previous owner installed the engine...

 

You got a d15b in a 96-00 civic? If this is right, are you running OBD1 or OBD2? Cause most likely if your running OBD2, you must have a 3stage vtec (2 vtec solenoids) engine and the ecu for it is hard to come by. Maybe thats the issue your having. Find out which motor you have and what ecu you have.

 

I had the EXACT same problem and it was completely due to the ecu.. If you don't want to do that you can try heating the engine till the fan comes on I heard that helps with idleing and a must do when installing a new engine

Orrrr tweak the throttle body

 

Unknown 1.5 vtec motor (does the distributor has 1 or 2 plugs) and a Y8 1.6 vtec ecu... I would say that is the problem...

 

this is my engine
and in the car right now is a P2P ecu

 

also forgot to mention that the previous owner took off the d15b three stage vtec head and swapped it for another d15 vtec head...

 

Huh? But why? So the car was running fine before also this misfiring was happening right? If so, check if your getting any codes but it could be a couple of things from like a bad O2 sensor, timing, distributor.

 

your guess is as good as mine man, he swapped the head for another d15 head not sure why. new o2 sensor was installed a couple months ago, codes are saying 1,2,3 cylinders are misfiring, so i guess its down to ecu,distributor and timing....

 

See, i had that same motor way back before cause i just needed a quick replacement and what i did was, i changed the intake manifold to the stock D16y8, replaced the 2vtec solenoids to the one that came with the D16y8, and used the P2P ecu from the D16y8. And the car ran sorta fine. lol

So your getting codes 71 72 and 73?