My 97 hatch did not come with a lip, and after searching around I can only find $200 SiR ones or $50 ebay ones. I looked in my local junk yard and no luck. Any ideas?

 

Ooops, forgot to mention that I am mostly looking for a front lip but back would be nice too, I know the general opinion on ebay parts are that they suck but are there any good lips on there?

 

Very, very, very few '97 Civics in the US came with front lips. None came with rear lips.

I don't know why you would be having so much trouble finding a lip though. They're everywhere. eBay, several different aftermarket suppliers, several different importers and websites like this are all good places to start looking.

If you're looking on eBay, buy from a reputable seller and know what you're looking for! It'd suck to think you bought a Type R lip, but turns out your lip is fake.

A lot of the higher quality lips (OEM ones and ones by some companies) are no longer made and thus in low supply. You might have to wait until some come up for sale and then decide if any of those particular ones are for you. A high quality lip isn't always something you just decide to buy and then hop online that night and put your order in.

You might want to try checking out ICB Motorsports or JHPUSA.
Sometimes you can find a real lip on eBay (by that I mean non-replica), but they're not very common. Probably 95% of the lips on eBay are the same businesses selling the same cheap eBay lips.

The lip might come folded up in a box when you get it, meaning you have to lay it in the sun or a hot bath to get it to go back to shape. These lips hold up great when they hit curbs, but might not fit so well.

eBay lips often don't come with any hardware or even any mounting locations or holes. I've seen people make threads about their lips being too long or too short.

If you buy an eBay lip, see if you can find photos of one on an actual car (like on this site - NOT a photo from the seller) and then ask them where they got that lip from. They might be able to tell you the name of the seller or if there were any problems they had with the lip.

It really depends on what your goal is here though.

If you're going to keep the car very long term then a more expensive lip might be worth it. If you're only keeping the car for a year or so before deciding Nissans are more your game, then I'd recommend you not buy a lip at all (or anything else for that matter).

If you're daily driving it on really poor roads, you might not want that $500 lip that hovers an inch off the ground. If you (or your girlfriend or mom, or whoever else might commonly drive your car) commonly parks on curbs then you might want to pass up on anything expensive or fiberglass.

I personally went the quality route and passed up the cheaper lips until I found exactly what I wanted. I've watched a lot of people waste a lot of money buying eBay lips, watching them go to **** and then having to replace them a few times.

 

Thank you for the well thought out answer. I was beginning to think nobody was going to reply. I know the question is pritty noobish and has probably been answered many times before but I still couldn't find it. Thanks again