LS/Vtec or stock ?

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randerson165

Senior Member
I have a 99 civic and blew my engine. I have about 2k to spend on an engine and everybody tells me to go ls and then add the b16a head later. This car is my everyday driver and yes I wanna smoke fools but I want a good reliable car too. This is probably a dumb question, especially to folks like you but, what would you do ? I could get another stock engine for about $400 and I'm not sure ? Any feedback ? How reliable is the ls engine going to be in the meantime and no vtec, is that cool ? Will I be happy with the ls untill I can afford the head swap ? Any answers will be much appreciated.

:worthy:
 
A replacement LS engine will be just as reliable as an original replacement engine- they'll both be used blocks. If you drop in the LS engine, you'll have more horsepower and WAY more torque than your stock engine (assume you have an EX), and it'll be a good candidate for boost or VTEC (or both) later. If you were happy with your stock engine, you will definitely be happy with the LS engine.
 
i agree with Calesta, if you dont have the money right now to do the full ls/vtec right now then sure... temporarily get the LS block and have it installed, as soon as you get enough for a VTEC head, then go ahead and slap that on!!!
 
Hey man, ls engine is not cheap these day.. They cost around $2000. If you want a relaible engine, i suggest you don't get ls vtec because you cannot red over a certain spot. According to my knowledge, you cannot red over 7000 rpm. If lsvtec is good then honda would of made the motor already, but they know that it's not good so they didn't made the motor. Lsvtec is pretty strong, but once you have that engine man, i gurantee that you'll have to fix it once in a while. I know some people who has lsvtec that are built by pro and still leak. Since you want to get a ls engine. I recommend you to get a crv engine(longblock). That'll be the head and the block only. Then you'll have to buy the tranny, axles, and other stuff separately; but the b20(crv) is way better. For a long block, you can get it for like $800 at Hmotorsonline.com. If you satisfy with your ex engine, get an ex engine because they are cheap.
 
Originally posted by Holy_racer@Dec 24 2002, 01:39 AM
If lsvtec is good then honda would of made the motor already, but they know that it's not good so they didn't made the motor.

everyone allways says this shit...... look people.... Honda is not in the market of making/selling street legal race cars... they make a few cars with decent performance (Si, GSR, ITR, CTR, S2000, NSX), and a whole ass load of cars with shitty performance but great gas milage and reliability.... none of these are supercars... if you were to say "well if it was so good ferrari/porsche/mclaren would have done it" about one of their engines i would agree compleatly... but those companies are in the market of making top performance supercars not long lasting economy cars with a little performance thrown in like Honda is.....
 
ls is more than reliable... tegs hit 150k + all the time by people who dont take care of them.

non-vtec owns joooo! :p
 
Holy Racer has no clue what the hell he is talking about. Please quit with the mis-information that you heard from a friend that knew this guy whose brother once heard... A properly built LSVTEC will not leak. Mine doesn't. You can rev the block past 7k with the right parts. I have seen it done on a stock bottom end but I don't reccomend you try it. Why do you think the CRV would be a better canidate? It has the same stroke geometry as the LS.
 
Remeber, this is my everyday driver, so the ability to rev over 7k is not super important to me. I think i'm going to go with the LS. Now what is Vtec going to give me that the ls doesn't have. What exactly does vtec do ?
 
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