After swapping a y8 head on y7 block, I have a flashing CEL but only at idle. If I rev above 3k it goes away. I also have a very rough idle, it was stalling originally but i tinkered with some things and now its just rough.

I havnt had the code pulled cause i dont wanna drive on it (any more than I already have), but looking at the spark plugs and using the screwdriver to the ear, it seems to be only #4.

The things I have tried are: valve adjustment twice, switched known working plugs,wires,injectors, distributor, new fuel filter, messing with idle screw, slightly advancing and retarding distributor from its original position, and lastly torquing down head bolts a little bit more, because when I originally did the job I had to use a 2'' extension on the torque wrench and the directions said with 2'' extension do 44lb if you really want 50lb.

I dont have any mixing of fluids.

Any suggestions would be helpful, Im running our of ideas, thanks.

 

double check the mechanical timing i.e at the timing belt by making sure the #1 piston is at TDC on the crank, that the timing marks on the cam gear are lined up and the dissy is pointed to the #1 wire.... after that, get a timing light and correctly check the timing and set to factory spec.

 

Check compression, you may have a bad valve. Also try intentionally adjusting the valves real loose and see if that helps. Disconnect fuel injectors one at a time to see if it's one dead cylinder or a more general problem. A bad intake manifold gasket or injector gasket can leak air into one cylinder only, making it too lean to fire.

 

im pretty sure its cylinder 4 because when i looked at the spark plug tip for that one it was black and the other 3 were gray (I switched them out for new ones, so it isnt the plug)

However, when letting the car idle with the radiator cap off, after about 10 seconds it slowly started bubbling up, is there any possible cause for this other than bad head gasket? :/ I just had assumed that if I messed up the head gasket, I would misfire at any rpm instead of just idle. The car drives relatively fine cruising at 55 (yeah, i drove it from my mom's where i worked on it back to my house even though it misfired)

I'll try unplugging the injectors and adjusting valves way loose to see what happens. If I do have a bad valve, are valves from y7 and y8 interchangeable?

 

I adjusted the valves way loose and now everything runs fine with the exception of some valve chatter! Maybe I used the wrong feeler gauge the other times. No CEL at all, took it for a test drive and got the vtec experience for the first time.

Just hope that I dont end up with a warped head from the extra 1/4 turn I put on the head bolts, that was dumb. I used new oem head bolts, so I would assume that I cannot just back them off 1/4 turn right?