Sorry in advance for a long post, just want to have a chance to tell the story of my engine swap.

It all started about 10 years ago when I was 16 years old and wanted to buy my first car. I wanted a CRX Si. However all I could afford was a piece of junk Chevy Chevette, which I lived with for my first 2 years as a driver. I then progressed on with a few other cars, mostly junkers. I started out with my first import a Mazda MX-3 Precidia V6 not the best but, was an affordable car and had rather good handling. This car I kept for about 3 years. I then saw the light (HONDA) finally in 1997 when I bought my Civic CX.


My initial idea with this car was to drive it as daily commuter, however then I started reading a few of the main tuner mags, and my attitude towards the car completely changed. Ever since I bought my first Air Intake system, I wanted more out of the car. I was thinking of a million different ways that I could go with the car. However after a lot of carefull considerations and after reading many different peoples opinions, I finally decided that an "ALLMOTOR" setup was for me, It was reliable (A big plus since I am a commuter) also seemed to be the easiest way to make it through emissions control testing, since with a turbo this is going to present problems with both emissions and possibly reliability.



Anyway I was at first thinking of doing a "Mini-me" swap with a d-series block already in the car all I'd have to do is swap the head for a SOHC Vtec head. This is when I caught up with Jacques Dorey who was willing to help me with swapping the heads. Anyway I got together with Jacques, in the summer of 2001 and discussed things with him about what I wanted out of the car (a streetable car, yet the abillity to take it to the track once in a while). We discussed things and felt that I would get the best result doing a full swap. This changed everything, I was probably influenced a little by Jacques to go the route of LS/VTEC, which he actually had in his car at the time. After doing the research it seemed to be the best route for me offing a larger powerplant to begin with and many options in which way I wanted it turn out. I must admit I originally wasn't expecting such an expense after all was said and done, but It was always one of my dreams as a kid to build my own engine and race it.



After a lot of long hours talking to Jacques and researching things for myself (actually a bit more than a year has passed ) I managed, with the help of Jacques (on more than a few dozen ocassions and with some of the parts from his garage) to source the parts that I wanted to use to build up my engine swap. It was only in the past few months that things were finally coming together for me, since both parts and financing were issues. We built the engine in the first week of September this year and had it installed over the second weekend of September. It was dropped in over the weekend, not to mention again help from Jacques, his neighbor John and myself we had the motor, tranny, axels, exhaust everything installed and running after about a day and a half. After now having this setup running for almost 2 months it is fully broken in and ready now to tune. Jacques, has been there for me throughout, and still after the engine build and swap. I finally have the end product, in my car and I'm very satisfied, hopefully with some tuning and some luck I'll be able to reach my goal of a sub 13 sec quarter mile. See ya at Mission next year.

Well I guess this is my way of saying thanks Jacques, if any one is interested Jacques recently started a business venture in the import performance industry, although he has been doing this already for a while now. He offers ECU chipping, Adapter harnesses for OBD2 to OBD1 and other computer adapter harnesses. Please take a look at his website at http://www.vtecfrog.com



Ryan Hecht