Installation is reverse of removal.

Getting the engine in from the top is not recommended. From the bottom it would have been a 15 minute affair. From the top I had to bring it in at an angle with the transaxle mount off, lower it past the mount on the chassis, put the mount back on the transaxle, then lift it up into place. Phew.

It was a trick doing it solo, I'm not a very big guy. My old auto shop teacher used to say "get angry at it". That was easy for him to say. He was more than two of me at about 6'5"ish and 320lbs! But that came in handy here none the less. In fact, I got pretty angry without even trying!

Exhausted

I ended up taking the whole exhaust off after I realized i couldn't find a used prelude downpipe or get the friggin accord DP off. So I cut it in half and chucked it. I put a stainless steel tsudo header(garbage) and catback (Tsudo pipes + a Thermal R+D muffler) on paired with a catco universal cat. All of the pre-made cats were too small and like 200$ The catco cat was 2.5" and 50$, even with the labor that was 1/2 as much as the nearest fitted cat.

There are tons of options for exhaust. I recommend going the custom route, its better and cheaper. Burns stainless, Catco, Thermal Research + Development, Maganaflow, etc etc are the places to get that sorted out. There are some really great/ultra expensive equal length headers available now that weren't when I did this swap. Just be sure its 2.5" and stainless steel, bolts and all.

I had to order all of that stuff so that gave me plenty of time (weeks) to sort out the rest of the swap.

Life is in the little details

In the meantime I put all of the accessories back on. The A/C compressor, P/S pump, radiator, alternator, belts, coolant overflow tank, battery tray, battery, and the coolant hoses. The intake, distributor cap, plug wires, shift linkage, throttle cable(take the prelude throttle cable bracket off of the manifold and move it over one bolt so the that nuts on the throttle cable line up. You'll see what I mean when you get there), engine grounds, axles (new drivers side, old passengers side that I eventually replaced as well). The fuel lines (with the accord fuel rail). The speedometer thing that goes into the transaxle- which should be replaced if you have a lot of miles, mine went bad shortly afterwards.

Wiring

The wiring harness requires some editing. I bought an Accord ECU plug from a junk yard for the ECU pins. You back those out of the plug with a paper clip. Make sure that the size of wire/pin is appropriate to the pin on the ECU. Get four of them out and make sure they're in good shape.

Solder those to your four wires running through the firewall and then mark them with what they are for diagnostic purposes. That makes any later CEL diagnosis a lot easier, unless your helper marks the wires wrong and you have to check all four wires again. Yeah.

Go to the engine side and run the wires to the area that the given sensor lives leaving enough slack at the ECU. Solder them up to the H22 harness plugs. Now plug the ECU side into the appropriate holes in the stock ECU harness. This is kind of tricky, make sure you realize from which direction the pinout photo is looking at the harness plug from. Otherwise you'll be backwards and you'll have to start over.

I say to wait to plug in the ECU side until you're done on the engine side because the ECU is very sensitive. Just static electricity can kill it let alone fumbling around with the wires and soldering them.

Now put the wires into loom, and tape them off like the factory harness for weather proofing. Make sure to leave some slack for engine movement and zip tie the loom to stuff along the way so it doesn't get sucked into the axle or pistons or something.

I actually had an unprotected / un-zip tied wire get burned and cause an ECU short which in turn blew the fuse and disabled the car. Loom and zip ties +_+'

Vacuum lines

This is for the prelude end, roughly. Click the picture for the full size file.

The vacuum lines are kind of a bitch. You have to take that vacuum junction where the map sensor lives behind the passenger side shock tower out and take it all apart. Take a look at the vacuum diagram in your two manuals and match the Accord vacuum junction thing to the manifold on the H22. I used mostly new hose and some old, but ideally you should procure some silicone vacuum hose and use all new over the whole engine.

That blows.. er I mean sucks.. eh, at least it's no FD

Fluids

Then it's time for stinky fluids! Put in your oil, coolant, clutch, and transaxle fluids. Make sure they're empty before you put those things in them, they may not have been drained (engine+trans). I didn't do the power steering until later. I had to order that hose since none of the local junk yards had one, or any preludes at all really. Be sure to use Honda PS fluid, other kinds will mess up your pump/rack apparently. Also bleed the clutch lines, which is fun.

• Oil: Redline/mobil 1/Amsoil/etc
• clutch: any brake fluid
• transaxle: Redline MTL(worked the best for me)
• P/steering: Honda

At this point with the oil in there its a good idea to either manually turn the engine over a couple of times or disconnect the ignition system fuse/relay and turn the it over for a while that way.

Ignition

As i mentioned on the parts reviews page the MSD unit was kind of tricky to set up. It took a couple tries before it actually started up. That was the only thing that kept me from doing so on the first turn of the key, after everything was all together. I suggest getting a usdm distributor if that makes your swap pnp. well worth it.

Starting it

First off double, triple check the important stuff. Fuel lines. Oil. Wiring. Coolant. Ignition. Have all of your diagnostic stuff at hand. Have someone else look it over for obvious stuff that you've missed. Look for stray tools in the engine bay. Turn the key to the accessory slot and wait for a second to prime the fuel pump and also look for CEL's. If there's a CEL, fix it first. If not, fire it up! Don't be surprised if nothing happens!

After it started up I let it idle for a few minutes as I looked around for fuel or oil leaks and fires and stuff. After everything looked ok I cautiously revved it up a couple of times. Not much, but enough to fall in love with the engine and the flywheel instantly. The throttle response without the P/S and the exhaust is like some kind of atomic chainsaw.

Done

And thats it, I eventually got the exhaust on there and went for the first spirited drive. I didn't go all out because I was taking it easy to break in the clutch, which was not easy, let me tell you.

 

Good luck and hopefully my setbacks will speed your swap experience: order everything far in advance! Get Air tools, get a lift if you can, check your axle nuts and exhaust bolts before hand to get them un-stuck if you don't have air tools.

And lastly for people preparing to do this, remember, a factory turbo car with the same time and money put into it will eat these cars for lunch. I did this for the joy of the drive!