My engine is going bad (burning a lot of oil), and I have a line on a '93 Del Sol with the D16 V-tec and an automatic that's got a really rough body for $500. Car has 140K miles on it, supposedly runs good (I haven't seen it yet). My car is a '93 Civic CX Hatch with the D15B8 and a 5-speed. I've swapped the S40 transmission into it instead of the stock S20.
The guy selling the car says that I can put the engine into mine and it'll run just fine with my ECU, but that the v-tec won't work. According to him, it'll get better gas mileage, though. He said that if I want the v-tec to work, I'd have to swap the harness from his car into mine as well, then get a new ECU for a v-tec and a manual tranny.
Is that all true? I'd hate to invest $500 just to find out it won't work. Also, how is swapping to this engine going to effect my fuel mileage? I bought this car to be a commuter, primarily.
Thanks a bunch!

 

The ecu from the delsol can be converted to manual. You can use the engine harness from the delsol as well you just need to add a few wires up to the shock tower plugs for the 4 wire o2 sensor.

Edit: For mpg it should stay the same or maybe get a little better if the new motor is in a lot better shape then your old one. I would look into getting a ex/si manual transmission to go with it as the gearing on the cx unit is horrible.

 

Yeah, I have an SI transmission in it now. I swapped it in about a week before the engine started smoking. Right now with the D15B8 I'm getting 35-45 on the highway (45 if I'm going 60mph, 35 if I'm going 75mpg), and about 34 in town.