ISUBIEXI

Honestly sounds like a bad idea. I would start off slowly if I were you. You could go Intake/Header/Exhaust/ thermal gaskets and maybe start playing with the tune. Once you go turbo you really need to know how to tune and troubleshoot. Also Hondata is pretty expensive, the hondata will most likely cost more than the car. lol. Then you need to get it tuned and that's another $400. All it takes is one drive with a bad tune and your buying a new engine. I assume your ECU now is OBD2 so you will need a new ECU and jumper harness to go OBD1.

I think the cheaper option would be going B20 and possibly leading into B20 Vtec. I definitely want to go B20 Vtec, most likely on a future car or maybe my wifes 99 civic. We are already 1/2 way there with the B20.

AshirogiHatake

Yea I guess that makes sense, the only problem is that I have no way of doing the engine swap. So I wanted to just increase hp but am not sure how. I can mini me swap but I'm sure that's worth it so I'll probs just do a y8 intake swap

AshirogiHatake

And how could I tune it? I want to, but I have no idea where to start with tuning.

ISUBIEXI

The gains from the Manifold change will most likely be extremely small, most likely less noticeable than a clean air filter or basic tune up. The mini me swap... yea vtec is good but its still only single Cam vtec and not much to be excited over. I think something like a test pipe or high flow cat would be more noticeable.

I have put quite a bit of money into my D16 from my project, the only reason I have justified it is because I plan to sell the car. Oil Pump, CPK sensor, water pump, timing belt, O2sensor, ect sensor, oil pressure sensor, oil pan gasket, valve cover gasket, intake manifold gasket, distributor and a new head. The new head and Oil Pump were both my fault. If I was keeping the car I could get a b20 for under $500, I think the LS transmission would be the thing that always bites me and would be another $350 most likely. And some LS parts to make it work with mounts and such. Most likely about $1500 in total, that would be keeping Power steering and AC. I think I have put a good $600-$700 into the engine and its pretty weak and honestly who knows how long the bottom end will last, I'm guessing at most she will live another 100,000. Once you are set up with B-series its simple to move between B16/B18/B20 since the Trans and shift linkage and mounts are the same.

I don't know what purpose for the car you have but I would have to say that generally a Swap is more mechanical than anything. Just legos, if you get the right parts you can just bolt and plug everything and you will instantly be running and happy. If you start doing modifications to the engine, manifold changes and injectors and changes like that you start fighting with the tuning, the ECU will be actively fighting you on making more power. If you want to start learning, and possibly eventually go turbo I would suggest the basic mods, Intake, header, exhaust maybe thermal gaskets, you can do the manifold change as well if you want. With all of these changes your tune will most likely need some improvement. You can install a wideband sensor and Vacuum gauge to monitor your Air fuel ratio. Get a OBD1 ECU jumper and chipped P28. I purchased a pair of extra chips and a Burn2 Chip programmer and am learning to tune using Crome. I also have the datalogger but since I have not upgraded crome I am not using it yet. FYI I'm not tuning the D16 but the H23A-vtec in my Accord. I would say your looking at a good $500 to start learning to tune and honestly your not going to get super power gains, just knowledge. If you plan to go turbo you need this knowledge or else your car will always run like crap or you will be a slave to your tuner. If you are running anything outside of a stock engine where you can just use a matching ECU you should have a Wideband so you can make sure your not running rich or lean, you cant trust basemaps provided by anyone since they vary so much from car to car. Just a note, the Wideband, vacuum gauge and Chipped P28 can be used with a different engine or different Honda so they are not like an engine mod that will be useless if you blow up the engine or hurt the car in some other way. I have been thinking lately that if I wanted to get rid of my accord I could swap everything over to a Prelude or Civic and it would run the same so the money I have spent is not dependent on the accord shell. lol