In reply to pimpm3:
Srsly, you should look at incorporating that name nationally and selling franchises. the franchise would consist of nothing but the sweet logo and name, for some reasonable annual franchise fee. i think there's lots of pent up need for comic relief and innuendo in the towing world. 
pimpm3 wrote: I woke up early with the intent to work on the car for a few hours before work. Of course as soon as I made my way downstairs it began to rain.It finally stopped raining about an hour before I had to get ready for work. I took the opertunity to label cut wires etc... I didn't take any pictures because it was more of the same. I was able to successfully isolate the fuel pump and sending unit wires, as well quite a few wires that will be unused in the civic. Power windows, cruise control and power locks have no place in the challenge civic..
Excellent. We got something like 8 pounds of useless wiring out of one of the Lemons cars.
Due to Florida's inclement weather and its negetive effects on my efforts to work on the civic I decided to move the car into the garage.
The civic had better not get used to parking in here, the M3 might get cranky...
Yes folks those wires were twisted together and uncovered. I can only hope that this was done temorarily to diagnose the fuel pump. Notice the splice 2 inches from the twisted wires. Before I redid everything there were 4 different wires spliced together between the ECU and the actual fuel pump.
This is a wire nut used on the ignition wire. Seriously the fact that some people are free to roam in the general population is frightening.
Here is the completed fuel pump, fuel sending unit wire. Notice the fancy resued plastic loom. Much better then bare wires and wire nuts.
And for my last picture of the day. Here is the factory OBD1 harness where it connects to the ECU. Notice the thick grey wires with a smaller wire sprouting from the middle. For some reason three of the wires have un-sheathed silver wires emenating from them. I am pretty sure this is normal, I guess they are for grounding or maybe to cancel out interference somehow. Does anyone know what these are for specifically.
pimpm3 wrote: Here is the factory OBD1 harness where it connects to the ECU. Notice the thick grey wires with a smaller wire sprouting from the middle. For some reason three of the wires have un-sheathed silver wires emenating from them. I am pretty sure this is normal, I guess they are for grounding or maybe to cancel out interference somehow. Does anyone know what these are for specifically.
You are correct, those are to reduce electrical noise that might affect those signals. Those "silver wires" should go to the ECU ground, IIRC.
Bryce
They do on my Accord.
When I worked for the Mazda dealer we had a guy come in complaining that his Protege would just die at times. Turned out, after much digging around, that our hero had spliced the power wire for his subwoofer amp into the fuel pump power wiring, so every time it hit a good deep bass note (well, it was a Majestyk amp so actually every time it made a really loud horrible clipping sound) the fuel pump would slow to nothing. 
He could not understand why this wasn't covered under warranty.
The shielded wiring in my S4 RX7 harness goes to (IIRC) the air flow meter and the O2 sensor.
I haven't updated in about a week, I have been busy working on the car and have made a ton of progress.
First off I finished up redoing the "rigged up" connections, everything was put together with either the small butt connector things or solder. No more wire nuts, or bare wire. The harness was still scattered about the car but all of the wires were where they should be.
Once I had everything hooked up I decided it was time to try to crank the car. First I decided to check the oil level. I pulled the dipstick out and noticed that the oil level was way over the second dot. 
I drained the oil and it was clean but there were almost 8 quarts in the car.
I made a mess of the floor when my 6 quart pan overflowed. I luckily brought a second pan over in anticipation but didn't switch fast enough.
I then pulled the valve cover to see how everything looked under it. No scarring, sludge, or anything out of place 
. I next checked the spark plugs and they looked good as well.
I plugged up the cluster before trying to crank the car, notice all of the lights are on and working...
Here is the ECU and the battery all hooked up.
After double checking everything I turned the car over for the first time and....
AngryCorvair wrote: In reply to pimpm3: Srsly, you should look at incorporating that name nationally and selling franchises. the franchise would consist of nothing but the sweet logo and name, for some reasonable annual franchise fee. i think there's lots of pent up need for comic relief and innuendo in the towing world.
Get the cease and desist paperwork started:
...it turned over great, and has good compression but it wouldn't catch. Based on my vast experiencs with Hondas I thought this could be a main relay. I went to the local Advance and sourced a new one. After unplugging the old one and pluging in the shiny new one it fired right up. It actually suprised me that it worked. 
The car ran smoothly and it didn't even have a check engine light. Score! I have a video that I need to upload to youtube of the startup, (actually the second time I started it, since I wasn't expecting it to start as soon as it did). Next I began to clean up the wiring so I could test drive it.
Despite the fact that I was excited to drive the Civic, I had to take a break. My buddy called me up on Saturday and asked me if I wanted to meet him at Roebling Road on Tuesday. I didn't have any tires for the SE-R and my M3 tires are borderline so I didn't drive, but that was OK because I got to ride in these....
A GT-R. This thing was pretty sweet, It felt alot more stable then I anticipated, and it pulls like a train. The brakes are incredable. It was his first time on the track and he dropped from a 1:45 to a 1:27.
Really enjoying the updates, especially with all the pics.
In the second GT-R picture you may notice something red and badass behind it. That is the rear end of a....
I can't believe I got to ride in a 458 Italia. I felt like I was in a video game, it was unreal almost like it was fake. I can't say enough about how amazing this car is. The sounds, how flat it is, the brakes everything about it are perfect.
After that I got to ride in a turbocharged Superleggra Lamborghini. It makes like 1000 hp, and noises that are quite possibly crazier then the 458 Italia's.
As if that wasn't crazy enough the Lambo had giant Hoosiers on CCW's. It was ridiculous. According to the speedometer we were hitting 177 at the end of the straight away.. My buddy even brought his friend who is a Grand Am driver along to drive the cars and coach him. (Tom Long, who is a really nice guy.)
Enough car Porn back to the lowely Civic build...
Here is a picture of the relay that was bad.
...and here is a picture of why it is bad.
Sometimes you can resolder these and make them work again. Not in this case
Some of you may remember this impressive piece of handiwork (Notice the positive lead and where it attaches to the fuse box)
Here is the fuse box after I removed the ratsnest of wire that the previous owned used to power the car. Much better...
I bought these to fix it correctly once and for all.
For some reason I forgot to take a picture of the finished fusebox. Use your imagination...
Here is the sweet wiring for the headlight, ughh... Notice the ballast for the HID's that are on the car.
Here it is all cleaned up...
Steering wheel is now where it belongs. Notice the wires are all unhooked in preperation for me placing themn in their new homes.
Here is the fuse box in its new location...
Here are the front brakes. Notice the cheeseball coilovers. I measured the rotors on the car and they apear to be 10.5 inches which would indicate that they are from an Integra. I will take them off and measure them correctly eventually.
Here is the interior before the inagural test drive.
Here is the engine now that the car is sitting outside in front of my house.
Man you are making some progress. Enjoy the write up and the detailed pics.
Two exterior shots. The RPF-1's will not be part of the challenge budget. I did weigh the spray painted / Chrome wheels that came off the car and they weighed a staggering 38 lbs. That is 10lbs more then the RPF-1's on the car now.
The test drive revealed several things. First of all the car is in limp mode for some reason. It runs smooth as can be but does not want to rev. I knew getting it to run was to easy. There are several things that can cause this.
The brakes work but you have to push the pedal very far to actuate them. I am pretty sure that is a sign that the master cylinder is to small. I am guessing when the put the bigger brakes on the car they never changed the master cylinder. Also the car needs an alignment. Now that it runs I will start knocking off problems one by one.
For the limp home problem, you gotta suspect that rat's nest of wire. Hope you have good new batteries in your V-O M because you're gonna need 'em.
Typically there are only a few conditions that trigger "limp mode;" based on pimpm3's progress with wiring so far, he should have no trouble finding the problem. I, on the other hand, would be in trouble
Oh man that track day break looked amazing! ItaliaItaliaItalia... 
Great progress on the Honda. You are a far, far braver man than I on the wiring issues!
I fiddled with the car a little before work. Despite the fact that it runs smooth as can be it is still is in limp mode. The funny thing is there are no check engine lights. If I unplug the MAP sensor the CEL comes on so I know that the CEL is at least working.
The speedometer is not working so the car's speed sensor may be the problem. I will investigate further the next chance I get to work on the car. I am sure no speed signal would trigger the limp mode.
Another problem could be the ECU, I have heard that the car will still run but do weird things if there is an ECU problem. I looked inside the box and did not see any evidence of damage, burn spots, moisture etc... I have a P72 out of an OBD1 GS-R, I will try that ECU and see if it runs better.
I just scored two rear adjustable Tokico's Illumina's with coilovers for $95.00 Shipped.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/120915732863?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
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