The K-Pro Thread

[Skippy]

As many of you know, my posts and DIY's are filled with childish comments and lewd references to any number of things.  If you don't like it, too bad.  I like to at least sound funny when I'm making a point, and maybe people will get more out of the experience.  Read this and laugh a bit.  After all, this is what you do for FUN, right? Shouldn't the instructions to your toys be as fun to read as playing with said toys in the first place??

This guide is intended to be used as an aid to the installation, operation, and maintenance of a Hondata Kpro ECU in a 7G Honda Accord.

Disclaimer: Use this guide at your own risk.  By reading and understanding this guide, you automatically acknowledge that you have read and completely understand ALL pertinent hondata warnings, disclaimers, instruction manuals, etc provided either electronically or otherwise.  If you have not already done so, please go to http://www.hondata.com/tech and read up on anything that sounds foreign to you.  Also please visit http://www.hondata.com/ktech for information on working with the Kmanager software.  The information contained in this thread is all original work and is the sole intellectual property of Steven Richardson (Theskip).  If you wish to reproduce, disseminate, or otherwise alter this work or use it on another forum, it requires my express permission and at the very least a mention on the forum that it is my work and where to find me if people have questions.  My DIY's have been C/P'd on other forums without my consent and without mention before and I do not appreciate it.  Just play nice, ok?[/size]


OK.  With that out of the way, let me just say this thread is a work in progress and it's gonna take a while for me to put all the information together and upload it here.  That having been said, welcome to the Kpro thread.  Right now it's just a bunch of photos and descriptions, but it will soon become a documentary of all that we have done to achieve the relatively impossible.  Through countless hours of collaboration, AIM sessions, phone calls, troubleshooting, and the hard work of one gifted guy out in Oregon, 7G accords now have a way to utilize the Hondata Kpro.

This thread is dedicated to Cham and the rest of the people who made all of this possible.  Without everybody's help we'd still be picking our noses and emailing hondata with our flames and rants.

ON TO WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE! @_@

Section 1: Basic information

The first step to running a hondata Kpro is first acquiring one of these:



As if I didn't describe this enough above (alluding to the still un-written introduction to this thread)...The hondata Kpro can be made by starting with one of a few different K series ECU's.  The End user difference between ECU's is in price and in functionality (or lack thereof) of the reverse lockout solenoid.  PND/PNF ECU's are a bit cheaper to acquire than PRB ECU's, and are therefore that much cheaper to get converted to Kpro.  For users with automatic or 5MT transmissions, the reverse lockout solenoid is not needed, so there is no reason to pay extra for a true PRB Kpro.  Conversely, those (like me) who have swapped from 5MT to TSX 6MT (or those who have swapped AT/6MT), the PRB ECU makes use of the reverse lockout solenoid to prevent accidental shifts into reverse while the vehicle is moving forwards.  For those who have 6MT's and don't care to spend the extra cash on a PRB ECU for Kpro (like me), all Kpro's offer the same features, so you're not getting cheated out of anything if you want to save a little money.


After acquiring a Kpro, you're going to need one of these:



Cham's nifty jumper harness is pictured cradling the Kpro.  This jumper harness allows 7G accord owners to use the Kpro ECU.  Since the Accord and other Kpro compatible cars are wired differently, a complex jumper harness is required to use the harness in our vehicles.  Cham designed, prototyped, and developed this harness for our use.  For reasons stated above, the Kpro cannot control the accord's HVAC, instrument cluster, and other very important subsystems.  The only thing that the Kpro can do well is control a K series engine.  Cham designed the harness to utilize both the Kpro ECU to control the engine only, while the Accord's ECU controlled the rest of the vehicle.  The harness gives necessary sensor inputs to the accord's ECU so that it can still control those related sub-systems, but prevents the stock ECU from controlling the engine.

SPECIAL MODIFICATIONS

Two very important modifications have been made to Cham's harness since his first units were produced.  These are the addition of external VTC wires, and the external CEL.

EXTERNAL VTC WIRES:



I'm not sure why Cham had to make this modification, but I trust in his knowledge.  These external VTC wires need to be connected to the VTC actuator located on the cam side of the head (The left side).  The two stock wires need to be cut from the connector, and these need to be put in their place.  For my own convenience, I decided to use bullet connectors as a temporary solution to hooking up these wires.  I decided to do this because I am Kpro'ing my vehicle on its stock motor as a trial before my fully built NA engine is installed.  If there is any problem with the Kpro, its harness, or whatever else that I can't think of, I want to be able to get back on the stock ECU as quickly as possible.



These bad boys make it incredibly easy to convert back to stock in case of an emergency.  I will fit similar connectors to the stock harness when I cut the wires going to the VTC actuator.  If I have a problem with anything, all that needs to be done is to unplug the Kpro's VTC feed, plug the stock wires in, unplug the Kpro from its harness, and return all connections to the stock ECU.  After the new motor is built and installed, I will make a permanent connection for these VTC wires, as reverting to the stock ECU will not be possible at that point.


THE EXTERNAL CHECK ENGINE LIGHT:

We asked for it, and he made it happen! An unforeseen issue with Kpro'ing a 7G, the ECU will set a DTC related to communication errors because it is not controlling the engine.  Unfortunately we don't know what these codes are because the Kpro uses the DLC, but they are certainly due to communication errors.  Again, due to the differences between Kpro compatible vehicles, the CEL needs to be wired up externally through the harness.  Since the 7G gauge clusters are LED based, there's no way to pull the bulb or rig up an LED directly to the cluster board, so Cham has tapped the harness for an external CEL.  The external CEL gives the driver notice that there are Kpro related DTC's present.  The LED can be mounted anywhere, so I won't go into where to do so.

Here are some pictures of how I modified Cham's harness before I installed it.

Tools and materials

THE SQUID!

Looks just like any other part of a stock harness



Section 2: Modifications needed to make Kpro work in your 7G

Part 1: The air fuel sensor.

Since nobody has been able to give me a straight answer as to if the stock accord A/F sensor is wideband, I'm going to make my own assumptions and post them here.  First off...the RSX-S primary A/F sensor is a confirmed wideband.  Since Kpro was designed for the RSX-S, I'm going to posit that the best equipment to use is equipment from the car that the EMS was designed for.  If anybody wants to give me the correct information, I'll gladly exchange it here in place of the load of bullsh*t I just made you read.



Ok, so you bought an RSX-S primary A/F sensor...but now you're stuck trying to push two male connectors together...it's ok to be gay..but it's not ok to waste time.  



The accord's stock A/F sensor connector is female, and the engine harness is male.  The RSX-S is the exact opposite.  For those of you like me, who enjoy having stuff that's easily convertable to stock, you can make your own custom sensor setup.  I had an extra accord primary A/F sensor lying around from when I tore my donor motor down, so I decided to modify the sensor before even thinking of installing the Kpro just to make things easier on installation day.  Again, this also adheres to my quick reversion back to stock in case of a Kpro related issue.

So here's what I did.

At first I thought of re-pinning the sensor, but I quickly got tired of that idea when I tried to de-pin the female connector...so I decided to use the cut and solder method.

First lets go over the materials for the job.  You'll need a soldering gun, acid core solder, shrink tube, and a wire stripper/cutter.  You'll also need an RSX-S primary A/F sensor, and an Accord primary A/F sensor.  I do not recommend using your only stock sensor as the effects of using an RSX-S A/F sensor on an un-Kpro'd accord have not been studied.

The first step is to notice that the accord's sensor signal wire is blue, and the RSX-S's is green.  You will be soldering these two together.  If you're colorblind you're OK by default, but for the rest of us...

The white wire is the power wire for the sensor's heater.  Match these up.

The two black wires are grounds.  One for the sensor signal wire, the other for the sensor heater.  I didn't care how I hooked these up since they're both grounds...I mean come on...they've got to ground out in roughly the same area on the chassis.

Here are pictures of the process:

The work bench

After all solder joints were made I applied shrink tube.  Notice the blue and green wire connection.  All other connections are common in color between the RSX-S and accord sensors.

The finished product!





BRB, I just found out the Ingalls ETD is out for the accord and I need to buy one ASAP.  Back in 15 minutes...or something.....

[jim]

same as mike, delete this post when this thread is up and running... but are we going to be starting up a Kpro'd accord basemap database?

[Skippy]

We can definitely start doing that.  I will "hopefully" be receiving my harness shortly, and after that's in my posession I'll buy the RSX-S primary A/F sensor and throw the whole mess together.  I'll street tune my car and then I'll see if I can either link to my basemap or describe what changes I made to the hondata map.

[Skippy]

Ok guys I have good news.  My harness came in last week and I purchased an RSX-S primary A/F sensor at work when I found out we had them in stock.  I will be installing my Kpro hopefully on wednesday (my next day off), and I will make sure to take lots of pictures for this thread.

Just so everybody keeps their cool, don't worry about the first post, it will be changed as soon as I do a full write-up of my install and write one of my notorious books on the subject.

[timot_one]

Awesome Skippy.  I would like to see what it takes to install the harness and what not.  I know you don't want anyone to know where your k-pro is going to be mounted, but all I want to see is how the harness fits into the picture.  I'd totally appreciate it if you could take pics of the install.

[Skippy]

Just a little update.  I'm at work and I just finished modifying an RSX-S primary A/F sensor to work with my car.  I did some pretty impressive solder joints and I'm pleased with how smooth it went together.  I had anticipated problems because the sensor wires are tempermental with soldering by nature.  Everything worked out great and I will post pics up tonight along with my introduction into the process.  Depending on conditions at work tomorrow I may install the ECU, or I might choose to do it on my day off (wednesday)...it all depends.  Rest assured pictures will definitely be taken.  

I will take the obligatory "Kpro harness hanging out of cabin" picture and "Kpro sitting on passenger floorboard" pics.  The ECU will be hidden sometime after installation just to make sure things go smoothly.

I will also be using quick connectors for the trial period concerning the VTC wires that Cham supplied.  Since the car will be running on two ECU's, any problems will not be incredibly difficult to fix.  I will put bullet style connectors on both the new wires and the old ones so that if I should run into a problem at any time, all that needs to be done is to disconnect the Kpro harness, plug the stock VTC wires back in, and then the car will be back on a stock ECU within minutes.

Stay tuned for an update tonight!

[timot_one]

Skippy, I'd like to make one suggestion.  On the quick release connectors for the VTC wires, please remove those plastic thingies, fill the crimped ends with solder, and then use heat shrink tube to cover as much of the metal connector as possible.  It will be much more reliable than a crimped connection and may save you trouble down the road if there is a loose connection.

[Skippy]

Tim, thanks for the recommendation, I will attempt to make that happen ASAP.

For those who haven't heard, I had my car on Kpro for about 4 hours on Wednesday and I had a good experience.  I ran the K24a4 basemap provided with the ECU and it was running extremely rich and I didn't want to drive it in that condition.  I messed with it for a while with my buddies at work and we got the idle up to about 14.3-14.5 AFR which was good..but that didn't take care of the rest of the band.  I am working on fixing the rest of the map but until then I'll just mess around with it here and there.

Update: my conversion with the RSX-S primary A/F sensor worked well with the Kpro and I can say that part was a complete success.  No codes at all from the Kpro concerning that...no codes at all period (which was a very big plus!).

I'm off to sleep for now...more to come soon!

[jim]

I forget who to credit for this idea, but I think its worth noting in your writeup that there is a second way to hook up a RSX-S wideband O2 sensor:

http://www.casperselectronics.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=CEI&Category_Code=HOND



Casper will make female to female O2 extensions for a nominal charge.  Thats the way to go for those (like me) who aren't as handy with a soldering iron as Skip is.  

[Skippy]

Excellent find Jim! This is a great alternative for people to use the RSX-S sensor, provided that all connections match the accord harness.  You might need to give them special instructions because I do think that one connection is in a different spot between the connectors.  Will check out and report back.

[JC04accord]

Would the Civic Si Sensor be plug and play or would these modifications be needed as well?

[timot_one]

Hopefully I'll be joining the ranks of people running KPro before the end of the year.  I'm going to look into that adapter from Casper for the RSX WB O2 sensor, even though I'm handy with a soldering iron.

[jim]

You might need to give them special instructions because I do think that one connection is in a different spot between the connectors.  Will check out and report back.

My harness is wired just like the one you posted pics of... I haven't double checked yet, but I'm assuming that all the connections are in the right place.

[msedacca]

I'm just copying and pasting this from the Gen7 website:

There are a few things I've found related to Kpro that might be interesting to those who it may concern for perspective and current Kpro users.

1. It is not necessary to use an RSX-S sensor as the wideband sensor. There is a conversion harness for $20 from Casper and you can use any other wideband sensor. I checked this with Hondata, they said it will work. The catch is that you have to calibrate the o2 sensor voltage for each if the sensor is not among the listed ones they have on file. In my case, the AEM UEGO kit will work, I just have to figure out the voltage which comes on the side of the kit.

To clarify, this will work for ANY and ALL wideband sensors, stock or aftermarket. This can be a much cheaper alternative, such as the AEM UEGO kit which is 250 for gauge/sensor.

2. Hondata just released a stock replacement 4bar MAP sensor. I'm sure none of us will be pushing that much power, but it's still an improvement over stock. It's only $140.

I'm still trying to figure out the transmission swap problem, so bear with me there.

[jim]

So you adjust O2 sensor voltage by going to "options>settings>wideband input" right?  I know there has been some talk about using the civic si sensor instead of the rsx-s sensor, but as far as I can tell the voltage values are the same for both which means they should be exactly the same right?  I have an rsx-s sensor right now, but im wondering if I should sell it and buy a civic si sensor instead...