B series engine for my civic?

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evans

91 Civic Project
I am looking to do an engine swap with my 91 Civic Hatch. I have not purchased anything yet and I am looking for good advice, pointers and any help in general. I live in Canada so its even harder to find a decent place to get the parts I will need. Anyone have any suggestions about which B series engine I should go with? I was thinking a B18B, but how much can I do to that to make it strong and faster? My budget is not very high, but I would like to do as much to the engine and get the most hp out of it before turboing it. Anyone have any suggestions! Open to anything!
 
I am looking to do an engine swap with my 91 Civic Hatch. I have not purchased anything yet and I am looking for good advice, pointers and any help in general. I live in Canada so its even harder to find a decent place to get the parts I will need. Anyone have any suggestions about which B series engine I should go with? I was thinking a B18B, but how much can I do to that to make it strong and faster? My budget is not very high, but I would like to do as much to the engine and get the most hp out of it before turboing it. Anyone have any suggestions! Open to anything!

Yes please search on this. Its been repeated so many times its not worth typing out. On the other hand, if you are planning to go turbo in the future, then trying to get the most out of your engine before hand is a total waste. i.e. a header and intake will be worthless once you go turbo.
 
which engine do you think would be good than?
 
alright, sounds good. I havent seen anythin about putting an H22A in my civic though? is it to hard?
 
buy ls motor b18b and do ls vtech b16 head is best u will get plenty of power and then in future they love turbo
 
I would like to do as much to the engine and get the most hp out of it before turboing it.

I think you need to do some reading on turbo setups before you jump into this. What you just said there isn't how turbo works. If you're trying to make a non-turbo motor more powerful, then you do stuff like intake, header, exhaust, bump the compression up, install N/A cams, tune for N/A, etc.

If you plan on going turbo, then you do the opposite, take the compression down, install turbo cams, tune for turbo, etc.

If you want to boost then you don't worry about how much power you can squeeze out of the engine before the turbo goes on, you worry about making sure the motor is properly set up for the turbo.
 
so you guys are saying get the engine I want and dont bore it out or anything, just get ready for a turbo, like different cams and what not?
 
Turbos respond best to mild cam timing. You can use your stock cams and still make good power. What you need to do is build up your bottom end. Like sleeving your block or at least getting a block guard, beefier connecting rods and pistons, ARP rod bolts and head bolts, etc.

Read, read, and then read some more. There are alot of things you SHOULD do to your motor before just bolting on a turbo. Injectors, fuel pump, MAP bypass, some kind of fuel management, Hondata, Crome, etc, lots of tuning, just to name a few. Like I said, read, read, read.....
 
which would be good for a turbo because its stronger and a little bit more compression would just mean more hp. SO to get the engine I want with a turbo, by the research I did, I need to sleeve the block, get new pistons, rods, cam shaft, cam gears and crankshaft? all made stronger for a turbo? Am i correct.
 
well the suspension and brakes arent including in that, turbo i was hopeing to get away with, in that price, thats not including purchasing the swap, I priced out the whole swap and it was 2000 shipped, so I will have about 3500 left just for the engine. Think I could get 300-400 whp? or am I better going with a B18?
 
suspension and brakes are never included with a motor swap. that's needed to harness the increased power the factory motor doesn't put out, like blanco said. a stock motor wont snap your axles. etc. brakes are not really necessary, unless you plan on wanting to stop. if it's drag only, you can skimp in that dept. now, be honest, if it's for street drag, for the love of god upgrade your brakes :)

nobody just gets away with a complete turbo kit. you might get a turbine second hand from a friend who has a DSM he's upgrading (in my case), but i highly doubt someone is just going to give away a full setup. you realize that going turbo means you need a new exhaust manifold, downpipe, wastegate if the turbine doesnt have an internal wastegate, charge pipes (gets air to your intake), probably an intercooler, deffinatly need the oil lines and possibly coolant lines, blow off valve, maybe a map sensor (if you run more than 10psi, can't use the stocker, look for a 3-bar), then dont forget a good tune. there's lots more than just slaping on a turbine and driving away.

you can make your hp goal with either the B18 or B16. Both B18 and B16 have each seen 800whp before. either way your going down a road well traveled.
 
well, as long as I am starting to move in the right direction, lol, I am so fired up for this project
 
Something tells me there should be a sticky on exactly how to search.

I hope everyone knows how to use the forum's built in search function by now. But what I'd like to show people, is that google tends to give you more of what your looking for.

By simply telling google to search within one particular website, you can make those couple thousand pages of results turn into something more like 10 pages. And they will be more relavent than the top 20 results the other way.

This is very simple, and can be used for basicly any website. For this example, I will use HondaSwap as the site. Replace that with what ever website you want to search inside. In the search field on google.com, enter:

'site:hondaswap.com'

*without the quotes.

Put a space after the site name, then type what your looking for. If you wanted to look for help wiring a tachometer, you could try
'site:hondaswap.com wire tach'

And google will find all posts with the word tachometer and tach, because the letters t-a-c-h are also in tachometer. Search wisely, as
'site:hondaswap.com wire meter'
probably won't get you as narrow of results. This is also incredibly useful when looking for posts with very short, obscure words or abrivations, such as 'ICM'.

Keep reading. If you have a question, write it down, and keep reading. The more you figure out on your own, the more the information will stick.
 
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