I'm looking at doing a fairly basic rebuild of the B18A1 in my 1990 Integra, and was wondering what suggestions people have.

So far, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but it does burn quite a bit of oil (1qt/500 miles is not at all uncommon) even under fairly easy driving conditions. It's had a hard life though, and it'll be much more convenient for me to rebuild it before it blows up than for it to blow up when I really need the car to work. By "a hard life" I mostly mean that my dad seriously neglected it - didn't check the oil until the light came on, didn't change the timing belt until it broke, etc.

I figure that I can always buy a used engine, but I have no way of telling if it's in any better condition than my current one.

The car is mostly a DD, but it certainly sees some backroads fun as well as the occasional autox... it needs to be able to pass smog without a problem, and run on the 91 octane pisswater that CA considers premium. I'm not worried about inspection of internal components, but the outside needs to look stock and I do need to be able to pass a sniffer. It's currently bone stock.

It needs to be able to last at least 100k, I don't expect it to last forever but I put 20k on it in the past year and expect to continue putting on miles at about that pace and don't want engine rebuilds to happen every other year or anything. I'd like a bit more power, but not if it seriously harms longevity. I'd also like to have some semblance of a powerband, it is a DD. Hopefully not too much worse on gas than now, either...

I'm also a student, so I have a budget... not sure exactly how much, but less is better. I'll be doing most of this myself, I've done a rebuild of a motorcycle engine before but no car engines yet. Obviously if there's some machine shop work that needs to be done so be it, but I'm not gonna be paying for assembly.

edit: I mention OBD0 because I'd like to keep it that way for smog purposes, and would like to stick with the stock ECU unless there's a good reason to chip it.

 

sorry this doesn't answer your exact question... but... fyi you should be able to pass an obd1 90-91 integra here in cali without a problem. Just smog it and don't tell them you changed anything. The car will run exactly the same as far as they are concerned. As long as the engine is original there's no reason for them to think you changed the electronics.

btw, I recently smogged my 1991 GS running obd1 and a stock b18a, they didn't even question the electronics. I also smogged it in this configuration two years prior, again, no problems...

 

Yeah, I realize that I can probably smog it with an OBD1 conversion but I'd prefer not doing the conversion anyway... how much does it cost to do one?

I just don't see the advantage of doing a conversion vs just using turboedit for tuning, if I need to tune.

 

conversion is cheap, well, depends on what you're doing. Often people are swapping a motor which will come w/ the ecu and distributor, which are the main cost of the conversion.

To do a conversion you'll need:
ECU
Distributor

Things you might want:
-ecu conversion harness (these are cheap nowadays)
-injectors

You can easily use either type of injectors, you just may need to do some wiring changes... Either type will work just fine, I just like to use the obd1 style injectors as you can then remove the injector resistor box which cleans the engine bay up a little bit.

But really in your situation (a budget stock rebuilt on a DD which will remain relatively stock) the engine management system shouldn't matter since you most likely aren't going to be doing a tune. What you should realize is that "budget" and engine builds don't go together if you're working with a DD. You need to make sure you know your priorities and be careful. If the car is your only transportation and you don't have a steady income (college sucks) you may want to be pretty conservative until you can afford it later. I know this screwed me a bit after I saved and saved and saved during college only to have a relatively simple build go sour after 30k miles...