rodhay

My H22A2 (1996 UK 4th Gen) has done nearly 165K miles and although it still pulls like mad, it's developed a bottom end knock that's not getting any better. Plus I'm going through a LOT of oil when using VTEC.

I replaced the bearing shells as a temporary fix a few months ago with some pattern ones from rockauto. It turned out the old ones were not damaged or scored, but had oxidised - probably from where I drove on the redline for like an hour solid a few weeks before!

It's only a slight knock, it sounds very much like a tappet. It can only be heard just as you start the car for a couple of seconds, then it goes away as the engine warms up (fast idle). Then as the idle drops back down to 800 rpm it comes back but only at very low revs. Above 1000rpm it sounds perfect. I'm sure it's the bottom end because I've had honda re-set my tappets which didn't make it go away, then I re-set them myself very carefully and only had to adjust a few but it didn't make any difference to the noise.

The gearbox is also a bit tired. All the gears work fine and luckily the common 5th gear/reverse problem seemed to come and go away about 2 years ago. But the problem I have now is it's difficult to get into first if the car is moving above 1mph, 2nd to 3rd sometimes won't engage if i'm accellerating very hard, and all gears are stiff to engage when it's not warmed up.

My budget is low, £1000 - £1500 ($1500 - $2000) on engine & hopefully gearbox. My first priority is reliabiliy so I'll be using Honda parts. My second priority is torque followed by bhp.

So I think these are my options and I wanted to get some of your ideas as well...

1. Buy a used 50 - 100K mile H22A1 or H22A2 engine and gearbox and do a straight simple swap.

2. Remove my engine and rebuild it myself, inspecting all worn parts and replacing or having them re-machined. Possibly doing the same for the gearbox. (I'm working part time over the summer so I'll be able to work on it solid while it's off road).

3. Have my engine rebuilt by a company. Possibly get some porting/polishing done and maybe a remap if my budget will stretch to it.

4. Buy a used 50 - 100K Mile Accord Type R (Euro R) H22A7 220Bhp engine/gearbox and swap that in.

Does anyone know if I get the H22A7 if I can swap it straight in to my prelude without any modifications? I guess I'd need to change over the OBDII electronics on the H22A7 (such as the distributor) from my H22A2 if I wanted to carry on using my OBDI ECU, or do some wire splicing. Or am I much better off replacing the loom and ECU from the Accord? Also will my driveshafts and gear linkages fit straight onto the LSD gearbox??

The one thing that's making me think I should stick with my engine is that I'm sure it's faster than it should be! The ECU chip looks standard, there's no polishing visible in the head or IM and I've only done normal I/E/H etc. mods yet I can do 0-60 runs in 5.1 - 5.3 seconds. Plus the thought of driving an engine you build with your own two hands sounds nice!!

Sorry for the loooooong post! I really need to make a decision soon - once that bearing spins it will be game over for my crankshaft... Please help!

carnot

I would suggest option 1 or 2 based on your budget. I think 3 and 4 might cost more than your budget will allow. I have never tried to rebuild the transmission but doing a basic engine rebuild is not too difficult and if you do most of it yourself you can save a lot of money. You will want to find a machine shop that is willing/can hone FRM sleeves......some won't even work on them. Good luck

mmaboxer02

Option 1 just a simple swap and don't have to worry about getting everything back together and time as time is always important

rodhay

Thanks for the advice guys. The more I think about it the more I want to do a build and make it faster but as you say time is important and I'd hate to have to rush it. I might end up doing option 1 & option 2 - pick up a 2nd hand H22A/2/5 and do a straight swap, then take my time rebuilding the old one and hopefully make some money back reselling the H22A/2/5 afterwards.

So I've been scouring the forums and I think I should be able to stretch to a couple of mods with few upgraded parts. I've never built an engine before, although I did take an Alfa Romeo GTV engine to bits before running out of time and money a few years ago!

So this is what I think I should do with my engine...

All new seals, gaskets, bearings, washers, oil pump and water pump.

Nippon Type S pistons & rings.

Replacement OEM conrod nuts.

Accord Type R/Euro R/Prelude Type S Cams.

New valvesprings. Skunk2, DH-Racing, or ferrea. Any recommendations/high mileage experience with aftermarket valvesprings?

Regrind valves and valve seats or replace + new guides if necessary.

Mild sand and polish to old rocker arm faces.

Casting mark removal on intake ports, portmatch regrinds to the intake manifold, plennum runners and throttle body.

If I can stretch to it I'll also get an Accord type R intake manifold.

I just had honda put on a new cambelt, balancer belt and auto tensioner so I'll resuse them.

Looking at all the stuff about hybrid engines using 2.3 cranks/conrods I think for reliability's sake I'll be avoiding those options. Mainly because of what people are saying about the oil sprayer clearance and that 2.3 cranks not being as reliable as 2.2's. Plus modifications to 2.3 conrods to work with the floating piston pin in the Type S pistions sounds expensive.

Obviously I'll be doing all the normal inspections as well. I'll re-hone if there's any light scoring or scratches up the bores, or rebore if there's gouges or out of tolerance bore taper. Check out-of-round on the crankshaft journals, and check the valve guides. Did I miss anything else?

I'm not planning on doing any head milling so the compression should end up at about 11:1 because of the type S pistons. I would like the compression to be a bit higher really as I only use 98-100 octane (V-Power). What's the best way to do that? I read somewhere it's best to avoid milling the head if possible due to the extremely tight tolerence needed for the OEM head gasket. Should I use a thinner head gasket? Or different rods? Or flat face valves?

Hopefully I should be good for 200whp straight off, and maybe 220+whp with a retune to 8-8.5K RPM (standard on UKDM is 7.5K). It's a daily driver so if I do rev that high it would only touch the limit very occasionally when it really matters!

I'll probably leave my gearbox alone until I can get hold of one from a type R with the LSD. Then I'll rebuild that one and do a swap.

Any other suggestions for the build? It would be great to hear from anyone who's had experience with these mods and how they've lasted the test of time.

PS here's a pic of her from a trackday last year :D

carnot

maybe ditch the auto tensioner and replace with a manual...ive heard the auto's are prone to fail. let us know how you handle honing (or not) the frm sleeves.

kamranm3

Go for H22a JDM

churn dasher

yeah go h22 i have h23a blue top i dont have to gear down on the highway but i dont get to string it out to 8500 in the turns no fun

rodhay

I had to go for an MOT the other day and just about made it though. The CO emissions were very high, but luckily dropped into the green at the very end of the re-test. 2 days later my engine sprung a big oil leak that has soaked the cam belt and all down the side of the engine. It looks like it's coming from somewhere down low so I'll be rebuilding a little sooner than planned! I've sorted out a spare car so I'm driving around in a citroen for the time being...

I went to have a look at a H22A5 I found on ebay that was selling locally. Man if you're EVER going to buy an engine off ebay make sure you do a compression test first! The guy was selling it as full working order. I turned up and had a good look over it. Turns out one of the platinum plugs had almost completely melted at the tip. We hooked up some jump leads to the starter motor, squirted some engine oil down the bores and ran a compression test. 1 was OK but 2 had NO compression at all!! 3 & 4 were also very low. There's no way that engine would have worked well, if at all! Lesson learned there. Don't buy until you've tested.

Pirate can I ask what you think the cheapest way to reach 220whp would be - based on the upgrades I'm going for? I thought it would be increasing the compression ratio as I'll be using 99 octane only.

Thanks for the advice on the rockers - in the UK they cost more like $2000 to replace! So if they go, I can only replace them with used parts to be cost effective.

I've already bought an Accord type R IM, and some Type S cams over the past few days (both in great condition).

For my valvetrain how about using the OEM springs and retainers for the type S prelude? Or would these not be safe at 8K RPM/get too close the the valve seals?

I'm going to do a DIY piston weight balance and will have a go at balancing my conrods end to end. With a balanced crank this should make the engine last well at high RPM. Hopefully I won't have too many problems getting the Type S piston pins to fit my rods. After reading lots of stuff on this forum, I'll try what Pirate suggested - press fit the floating pin into my rods to make it a fixed pin.

As far as the tensioner is concerned, I've only just had it replaced by honda. The old one did last 155K miles, although admittedly it did fail such that the cam belt was slapping the dust cover. I noticed a hesitation when disengaging the clutch and heard a noise noise at 3-4K RPM. So I pulled the rocker cover and saw the cam belt loose. I'm going to stick with the auto tensioner as I think the old one did last well, and if it does start to fail, I'll hopefully notice it. Plus I've also heard of cam belts snapping with the manual tensioner, possibly because it's very tight to get over the pulleys in the first place.

For the header I'm running a DC Sports with the 2.5 inch collector. I know they're a bit **** but hey for the money I think they're alright!

I'm just waiting for my new engine hoist to turn up. As soon as it does I'll get started and pull the engine. I figured until I have a look down the bores I won't know whether I need oversized pistons or not.

Has anyone had any experience with mizumo gaskets? A full gasket set from Honda over here is about £300/$450! I can get a very good aftermarket set for about £150-£200 but mizumo will sell me a complete set with delivery from the US for £50! Sounds too cheap to be true.

Will let you know how it goes

90lude2.0s

Valves, retainers, cams and all that extra will put you WELL over your budget of 1500. I rebuilt my JDM H22a for just about 1,000 but that was with getting deals.

BB1 H22A LUDE

Say before you write off your engine as being dead, you say you have a 1996 UK 4th gen with an H22A2 which has done nearly 165K miles. Have you checked and or replaced the lost motion assemblies??? My engine is around the 145K mile mark and they are well and truly shot. Started as a slight knock at one cylinder but now it's most of them. Engine still pulls like a beast but it just sounds terrible. I would recommend that first. H22A crank & rods are prity solid if you keep the oil level and quality up to standard, thus I would bargon on LMA's. Also, going H22A7 is nice but will be work. Rebuiling your own is nice in that you know what you have. Rebuild is probably best but will cost a bit, still not as much as a new JDM H22A, atleast.

rodhay

The engine is almost out now - came across a couple of ceased mount bolts that I've left soaking in penetrant spray, plus my engine hoist turned up smashed so I've had to wait for another one which just turned up yesterday.

I'll certainly check the LMA's. It would be great if thats all that was making the noise and I don't need to have the crankstaft reground. I'll plastiguage the bearings to check all the clearances and out-of-round before I do anything.

It is starting to look like the budget is going to go out the window. Oh well, it's cheaper than buying a mitsu evo 9 fq 360 which was plan B!

Does anyone know a discount honda parts supplier like the ones in america that can deliver cheap oem parts to the UK? I've tried a few of the popular ones but they won't ship to the UK. From what I've seen some parts are 2-3 TIMES as much from honda UK!

rodhay

The engine is finally in out and in bits. I'll post more info and pix when I have a chance, but before that I wanted to ask about cams. (If this post is going a bit off topic plz let me know if I should change the title or start a new one or whatever to keep people happy!)

I bought some type S cams off ebay, they're supposedly from a UK type S prelude. I've measured the overall lobe height of my old cams and compared it to the type S cams, but they're almost exactly the same. There's maybe a +0.01mm difference on some of the type S lobes. But the strange part is I'm working through the USDM H22A1 service manual and ALL of the lobes on both cams measure up to be the same or LARGER than what the manual says is standard (new).

So do USDM H22A1's cams have have smaller lobes than UKDM H22A2's? I doubt it but I can't figure it out why my 165K mile cams would have larger lobes than new?! If anything they should be worn a few 000's smaller.

Looking at the lobes of each cam end-on, the profiles look like they might be very very slightly different. I would say the type S cams look like they lift faster/earlier, dwell longer and drop faster (if that makes sense). But it's soooo slight it could just be my eyes and they're actually exactly the same.

My H22A2 cams are stamped A on one, and M on the other. Both of the supposed 'type S' cams I've bought are marked J (and their part number happens to end in -J00). Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? I mean why would they measure the same as my old cams?? I thought they should have a 1mm higher lift!

Thanks for that www Pirate. They look great for prices but a lot of their H22 stuff seems out of stock. I'll definitely contact them when I know exactly what I need to buy. That's also very kind of you to offer with the stealership. I might well take you up on that offer very soon!

rodhay

So I guess the 'Type S' cams I bought are just normal cams eh. Ebay claim in progress...

Anyway, having found my guides worn to crap, and the valves have overheated and warped a little on the intake heads where the oil had been running down, I checked out the price of a new Honda valvetrain. And then fell over... What are they thinking here in the UK?? £50 PER VALVE? WTF!

After hours of reading these forums (thanks so much to everyone who posts their experiences on here), I've bought/am buying/already had the following:

Euro R IM
Hondata IM Gasket
JUN Cams & Springs
Ebay cam gears
Crower offset Ti Retainers
Skunk2 Hi Compression Valves
3 Angle Valve job + bronze guides
OEM Type S Pistons + rings
Milled head to factory limit
Port 'smoothing'
All new ACL bearings
Block Honing

And all the usual stuff like water pump, gaskets, cambelt, etc. plus some extras like HT leads (all OEM).

I'm still under my £1500 budget luckily but I think it will finish up somewhere closer to £2K with customs fees and all.

With around 11.6:1 I think I should be good for 220WHP+ now

Just need to choose a good value/easy to use ROM setup. Oh and buy some CLAY!

D15B_ek

I also need a new motor. Since Im still a "trial" user, I cant start my own thread. Can you guys help plz?! I have JDM D15B so it has vtec, but have developed SERIOUS rod knock. So i cant even drive this anymore right now. I have a damn ear mint head on it, so if at all possible, Id rather just find a bottom end to slap on it. My question is: What bottom end works with that head, and what would you guys recommend for the bottom end? I need this running asap, and like I said I could just go get another D15b, but Id rather stick to just putting my head on a new bottom end for $$$ sake right now. Thanks so much

Kronn 98SH

I would post in the Civic area.