After owning and building many Civics I have just acquired my first Accord and have some questions about the ignition system. This accord comes with a none adjustable Hitachi Distributor. Base timing is factory set and the distributor can not be adjusted. Every Civic I have ever owned or worked on for that mattercomes with an adjustable 3 bolt TEC distributor. This allows base timing to be independently controlled separate from the ECU. I notice the head on the Accord F23 engine has the mounts for the TEC distributor just like the Civic D16 and I also know some Accords of the same make and model come equipped with the TEC distributor, just likevise versa some Civics come equipped with the Hitachi (which I have never seen on a Civic).

My question is is it possible to swap the Hitachi distributor for a TEC and gain the ability to mechanically adjust base ignition by rotating the distributor or is the wiring harness completely different? I do know the mounts for the TEC on the F23 head are there.

Also does the use of a TEC vs. Hitachi distributor have something to do with a California Cert? I live in MD and all my other cars are not CA certified but this one seems to be. Which adds a bunch of extra crap to deal with.

Accord Hitachi Distributor
Un used mount on head



Civic D16 Adjustable TEC distributor

 

It would be a lot of work rewireing the engine to use the sensors in the civic dist. Dont know if they would be compatable with the ecu either. Why do you want to adjust the timing?

 

I didn't mean to actually use the D distributor on the F engine. I only used that picture as an example from my Civic to show the adjustability and 3rd mount on the head in use on the TEC vs. the Hitachi on the F23. Some Accords do in fact use the TEC distributor and it is adjustable. So that is my question.. if I had an adjustable TEC from a F23 accord would itwork on mine which originally came with the non adjustable Hitachi. The proper mounts are there as the heads are all the same of course but I don't know if the harness is the same.

The reason for this is that I am completely **** and would like the ability to slightly tweak base ignition timing, which in turn would give the ability to add or subtract a few degrees throughout the RPM range as driving habits warrant. You and I both know this is probably completely worthless but thats just how I am. Just I just bought this car to drive I should probably just leaveit completely alone and focus on the Civic but I seem to have the inability to do that.

 

The adjustable accord and civic distributors are similar. They have the adjustability so that the base timing can be synced up with the crankshaft since they have all 3 sensors in em. The non-adjustable distributors have the crank and tdc sensors moved to the engine reading directly off the crank so no adjustment is needed to compensate for timing belt stretch and such.

 

AH thanks. You answered my question.

Out of 6 Hondas this is the first I have had with the Hitachi setup.

 

I have a similar question I want to switch to the tec distributor because there are just no aftermarket ignition parts available for the hitachi. Is it an easy swap or does it entail major work? Is it worth it?

 

I have actually done this swap on a 96 accord, mostly for the availability of parts. It is just a bit of splicing in the correct wires. I cut the hitachi connector off the car harness since I don't intend to use it again, and spliced in a tec connector. The black/yellow wires go together, the blue on the connector with the black/yellow connects to the blue wire on the car harness. From the large connector the yellow/green goes to the same, and the shielded pair mates with the other two. black to the orange, white to the yellow/ shielded purple. The other wires are not used because the sensors are duplicates of the crank sensors.

 

Thanks for the info. There are absolutely no aftermarket parts for the Hitachi, However you can put in an ACCEL coil with only minor modifications to the distributor cap. Also I just put 10.2mm wires on my car, with the Accel coil already installed, and I have noticed that at low RPM (below 2500) that the car bucks a little like there is a miss. When I put the 7mm wires back on it runs fine and I have Ohmed out the wires and everything is within spec as far as they go so I know it is not defective wires or something else within the ignition system. Accel recommends no bigger than 8.8mm wires. Is it possible to have to big of a spark plug wire? Thanks for all your help!

 

@Jdittmann thanks for the info on the accel coils, I have done msd and had it burn up the dizzy before so I'm a little leery of just trying one because it's name brand. As far as wire size, there is an optimal size I would guess around 8mm. picture a pipe with water flowing though it. Too small a pipe will reduce the speed, but too large a pipe will reduce the pressure and thus reduce speed as well. Could be a little off on that, but I think it's fairly accurate.

As to the topic on hand, I mentioned that I just did the Hitachi to tec dizzy swap, a little more detail on the swap. I initially did the swap to eliminate one potential cause of my starting problem on a JDM swapped Accord I just got. The Tec has three sensors to the one in the Hitachi, so I just had left over wires from the two extra sensors. Come to find out, the crank mounted sensors did not have the gears to give them signal, so the ecu wasn't getting a TDC signal. Since the tec was already there and had the TDC and CKP in it, I took the opportunity and wired those bad boys straight to the ecu and I'm up and running.

 

Thanks for the info. With the Accell coil swap you, in addition to cutting out some extra plastic from the cap, will have to either put a longer spring in it to make contact between the coil and the distributor cap or you can do as I did and solder some wire onto the female end of the coil and then run that wire up and solder it to the original spring. You use some heatshrink or electrical tape on the coil to kind of hold the wire in place. You can also do this without soldering it you just kind intertwine the wire with the spring and tape the wires to the coil. It works great and before I took it to and idiot shop ("car electrical experts") because of a starting problem (turned out a bad starter) I was getting 32-35mpg combined highway city driving however they said it was only running on 3 cyl and did a tune up (however I was missing one of the bolts that holds the dist. cap on and it was still missing when they were done and it was same cap and rotor) where they took out my NGK iridium's and replaced them with stock NGK's and tool off my 8.5mm ACCELL wires and replaced them with 7mm napa jobs now I am only getting 26-27mpg. But the combination of the Accell wires and coil works great even with the modified hitachi! THanks again for all your help