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My husband and I have a 1992 prelude (manual tranny) that we bought from a junkyard a couple of years ago that was a decent daily driver and a fun project to work on. We replaced suspension, brakes, exhaust, wheels/tires, as well as some DIY body work and rattle can paint job. The motor finally reached its end over the winter and now that spring has arrived, it is time to do something to get the prelude back on the road. I thought it would not be too expensive to have a simple rebuild done and budgeted $1,000-$1,500 (we'd remove/install motor ourselves). But, when I called the local machine shops, I got quotes of $3,400 - $4,000 for the rebuild. Yikes! I found a listing in local ads for a $400 running 1994 prelude (auto tranny). The idea was to pull the motor from the 1994 car, but perhaps it may be better to take the parts from the 1992 and do an auto to manual tranny conversion on the 1994? The manual tranny in the 1992 is very solid.
The first pic is our 1992 prelude (with a fresh rattle can paint job). The second pic is the 1994 prelude for sale that we are going to see (and probably purchase) tomorrow.
Remember that if youre doing engine swap it would be wise to do timing belt and clutch jobs and new all the related seals - it increases the total cost
Tough to beat 400 for a running car, as long as it has a compatible engine i.e. H23 to H23 or F22 to F22, just to make the ecu and exhaust as easy as possible.
The idea of replacing timing belt, water pump etc is good, and very much a good idea to do all that stuff while you have the engine out of the car!
We looked at the $400 car yesterday. It has 218K miles but drives well, sounds decent, no leaks, and no smoke coming out of exhaust. The car has a bunch of other parts that we could use, too. However, the motor is the H22A and my blue prelude has the F22A, so not directly compatible, but hopefully not too hard to find an ecu that will work? We told the seller we wanted to sleep on it, but need to make a decision today.
We also found a shop in town yesterday that will install motor for $450, so that is a huge plus. Still hesitating to pull the trigger, though. What do you guys think?
And thanks for the tips. If we do decide to commit to this project, we will get seals, timing belt, water pump and clutch.
Total cost - $1300+ -- includes $450 to get red car home, $150 engine hoist, $50 to tow blue car to shop, $450 for shop to install motor, $200 for seals, belt, clutch and pump. Am I missing anything? Any guess on cost for ecu $?? Can I use the main wiring harness from either car?
Last edited by Janet Conway; 04-04-2017 at 09:00 AM.
You should be able to use the ecu from the donor car, just have to wire in vtec. If the exhaust and everything is complete, should be a simple swap. Use the wiring harness that is currently in the car, and just add the wires needed to the vtec solenoid, some of the 92s had the wiring from the ecu to the engine bay, some did not, so there may need to be 2 pins added to the wiring harness at the ecu side. If you search for the how-to on adding vtec, which should be in the FAQs, it has all the info.
Thanks for the advice. That is reassuring. The exhaust is complete on the donor car, and it does not seem too complicated to do the swap, except for the ecu/wiring harness concerns. We may even attempt to just install engine ourselves. I do not believe the donor car is a vtec, but it is an auto, so I assume I still need to get a different ecu?
04-02-2017, 09:47 AM
engine swap or manual tranny conversion?
