I've had and loved my Civic for a while now, but her age is starting to show. With the pedal to the floor on a flat road, she can hardly get up to 85 and the only time she'll go faster is while on a significant incline. She gets up to speed very smoothly for when merging onto main roads, but the stretch from accelerating from 40mph to 55mph while merging onto a highway, she really lags behind and takes a while getting there.

Which leaves me thinking that maybe it's time to do an engine swap. I've done some research, and think a swap to a B series engine would be the way to go. From the numbers alone it seems that the B18C5 is the beast as far as HP and torque, but my question is, how would it, along with any other B series engine, affect my gas consumption or would there be any drawbacks making my Civic not a practical daily driver? Basically what I'm asking is, what B series engine would be most practical in a daily driver with the highest possible performance?

If I do go through with the swap, from my understanding, I'll also have to swap in the new engine's transmission? My Civic is an automatic, and I had planned on gutting it for a manual transmission anyways, but if I go for the engine swap, I'd be using that engine's transmission and not have to hunt for a manual EX transmission, right? Of course, I'm assuming I'd still have to get pedals and stuff when doing the swap.

Lastly, as to acquiring the parts, would you recommend raiding local junk yards for the car with the engine I'll be swapping to or browsing online for someone selling and where would I find the lowest price? Wherever I do get the engine from, would it be better to get the additional transmission parts (pedals, etc) from a junk yard or online?

Thanks for the help! This will be my first real project car and I have plans down the road, money permitting, to mod/tune the car further. Her body is in great condition for being older than me and she has no electronics problems aside from a wonky radio and I think she's got a lot of potential.

 

I actually swapped a b20 in my 90lx and loved it. its fun to mob around with torque. Even went and got the hasport bracket and had ac. Your sedan would be way easier because its already multi point.

 

After 8 hours of much more substantial research, I believe I've got it narrowed down, but still looking for opinions.

New thread here: https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...3#post48032843

 

any b series. even b18a/b. Fits prefect and runs good.