I have a 97 ex civic with a check engine light on. Apparently in California the auto parts stores won't Rent out code checkers. So I jammed a paper clip into the service connector and it flashed code 22. I saw some stuff about the oil pressure for the vtec and had to note that the oil is slowly leaking but I keep it full. The previous owner did a motor swap and now it has a 1.5 liter non-vtec. Good on gas but I'm waiting to do a motor swap somewhere down the line. In the mean time I need to shut the light off to get the car smogged. I was wondering since the new motor is non vtec is it an electrical issue the kicks the cel on?

 

Bottom line, the ECU is expecting a VTEC engine.

The VTEC system includes a fault detection system based on checking the oil pressure after the VTEC solenoid valve. When the valve is open the pressure must be sufficient to properly engage the VTEC rockers or damage to the valvetrain is likely. If the pressure switch does not close when expected (shortly after the ECU turns on the solenoid to engage VTEC), the ECU disables further VTEC and throws a fault code and CEL.

Since you don't have a VTEC engine you don't have the valve and switch active. The simplest solution is to swap to a non-VTEC ECU.