No VTEC on 93 Si with H22 - Honda Prelude Forum

vprinzo · 01-07-2012, 07:51 PM

I recently bought my first lude

The guy I bought it from had a mechanic swap an H22 into it.
Well the kid drove it for about a week then it started running rough so he parked it. Then I came along and bought the non-running lude. The auto tensioner had failed and the timing belt was slacked. Lucky for me the valves were not bent so I cleaned the head up and reassembled everything.

Well I took it on it's maiden voyage and the VTEC is not coming on.
Solenoid checked OK
Pressure Switch OK
Screen is clean and head and valves were just set to factory specs.

The previous owner put in a P28 ECU off ebay from "RICH TUNED". I confirmed this when I opened it up.
The previous owner also said the VTEC didn't work for him when he initially drove the swap.
The mechanic wired the pressure switch to ground and the solenoid to the green/yellow wire so that looks ok. And the lude is an Si so the wiring is already there.

As I was driving I unplugged the solenoid valve and hooked it up to a car light bulb with it grounded. Then I took it out for a drive. As I rev to 7k the light bulb doesn't come on so there is no signal coming from the ECU.
Then I tested it with the pressure switch wired correctly, just in case the ECU was set up for that and again no voltage coming from the ECU.

Soooo. . . to me all signs point to the ECU. Then I asked the guy I bought it from about what kind of tune was on it and he didn't really know. He then told me that his mechanic tuned the ECU himself, which I didn't really understand, because I thought that it should have came tuned from "RICH TUNED".

Finally my question. Does this sound like an ECU problem? To me it does.
This ECU is mystery meat to me. I have no experience nor the tools to see what was acutually flashed on this thing. What are some suggestions to find out what this is tuned to, and/or get it re-flashed with a new tune. I live in central NC and don't know anywhere to take it locally to flash it.

Thanks! sorry for the lengthy post

minilogoguy18 · 01-07-2012, 08:43 PM

The pressure switch should have 2 wires, 1 power and 1 ground. The ECU does sound like garbage as are 90% of them out there, especially if it came from eBay. Check the oil pressure and oil level as well, low oil pressure will not allow VTEC to work.

vprinzo · 01-07-2012, 08:47 PM

Oil level is good.
I would have to get a tool to check the oil pressure.
I ran it with the pressure switch wired in (light blue to ecu, and black to ground), and also with the pressure switch bypassed (light blue wire jumped to ground).
Both gave me the same result.

minilogoguy18 · 01-07-2012, 08:57 PM

No CEL? CEL bulb working? Yes, there are people out there like that who would pull the CEL bulb to sell the car. If no CEL and oil pressure is good then ECU is at fault, if so then try to find a legit P13 that hasn't been tampered with.

vprinzo · 01-08-2012, 05:37 AM

There is no CEL light on when the car runs.
The light does light up on intial startup so it is there.

deaflude · 01-08-2012, 10:27 PM

My friend richardo who is deaf and own a h22 prelude. He did bought an ecu from rich tuned from eBay. It is piece of **** tuned and doesn't work well so he took it back for refund and went bought an original virgin p28 and had it tuned by CMB tuning (well known tuning store at orlando) and VTAKKKKK!!!!!

vprinzo · 01-09-2012, 12:24 PM

So I was able to track down the mechanic who "tuned" the ecu for the guy I bought it from. This is funny.
So the previous owner wanted as much power as it could possibly make so the guy at the tuning shop said that he tuned it so it would run in VTEC ALL THE TIME!!
WTF, I've never heard of this, but surely there is no VTEC at all, and it seems to be running really rich.
So the only mods to the engine are an intake and exhaust. The rest is stock. For $40 I can take it locally and get the base map for an H22 put on it with VTEC. Or am I not unleashing the potential of the chip and engine? Should I get it tuned?
Thanks!