Hello Honda-Tech,

A little bit about myself and my current project. My name is Phil, and as my screen name suggests I live in North Dakota. I've been into cars for as long as I can remember and Honda's probably the longest . I have owned quite a few different cars in my day but mostly Hondas. My very first Honda was an '85 Prelude that I had bought from a friend when I was a sophmore in highschool. I had immediatly fallen in love with car and certainly sparked my love for the Honda brand.

After the old 'lude I moved onto a '98 Civic, then a '00 Lude. I then traded the Prelude in for the Integra LS which is my current and 1 of 2 project cars. I decided to go for the Integra over the prelude becuase I wanted a car that was already set up a little better than the Prelude to compete in AutoX and HPDE's.

I have owned the car for 2 years. My first summer I had it my buddy had purchased an S2K and as a practical joke I secretly got a 75shot of nitrous to run against him, when he saw that my LS teggy and his S2K where the exact same speed he was a little confused. But after awhile he had cought on haha. Since then I have graduated Lineman school from NLC in Idaho. I drove the teg all the way out there and back with no problems. After I had gotten a fulltime job with a company I am very happy with I bought myself my new baby, an '04 mitsu EVO RS. After rocking the teg as my daily and keeping the EVO for the weekends and drag events I figured the Integra needed some love, after all I have put it through a lot.

So far the current plan for the Integra is keeping it as my daily driver but at the same time prepping it to compete in the AutoX events and some Track Days next year. So onto the Build!:

 

Above is the before shot, what I was working with on this endeavor to create a road worthy track car. Not much of a start. And I appoligize now for my lack of posting knowledge and picture attachments.

Oh but look what has arrived. Maybe there is hope yet..

 

Nice!! Subscribed as I am going to be doing this same exact swap in my dc2.

 

Its good to see more people from ND. I'm in Fargo, where are you?

 

Grand Forks, I am in Fargo a lot as well. Went to NDSU for 2 years.

 

I had thought about doing a motor swap for quite some time and chose the jdm B18C for a reason. When building a Honda everyone knows that there are all too many routes to choose whether it be N/A, FI, motor swaps for B,K,F,J.. the list goes on and on. I had thought about it for years being a Honda guy and very intesly in the last few months. But chose the B18 for its simplicity for a swap and it has been an icon for the Honda game forever.

I dont really want to hear, oh "should have gone K" or "N/A is an expensive way to go slow" or "should have gone turbo". If I wanted to be rocking a super fast Honda I'd get a Boosted S or save up for a year and buy an NSX and twin turbo it. I have an EVO, it is more than fast enough now and will get a lot faster in time.

So no more ranting from me for now the motor will stay N/A. All stock with for now an intake and exhaust because A) the motor did not come with and intake and I will not use the AEM V2 I have because it is now winter and driving in the rain. 2) Because the LS exhaust does not bolt up to the 2.5'' header, plus it is restrictive. N/A will be a monster help with the autox for great throttle response and that dear reliability will be a monster help on the road course. In my area of the country there is not a whole lot of these events to attend but enough to have fun. Next year there will be 6-10 autox events in eastern North Dakota in the Fargo and Devils Lake areas. My friend and I will see if we want to go any further to compete. Also my favorite event of the year - BIR Proving Grounds. Phenomenal event, If you are anywhere near the area of Minnesota I HIGHLY recomend this event. Its a 3 day event put on by MAPerformance. Even DSPORT was there last year so you know its good hahah. Its full of great times with a 2.5 mile road course that was very recently repaved through a lot of it, autox, drag racing and drifting along with burnout contests and what have you. The best part about this year is that there will be 2 of these events. I believe one in June and one in September.

The B18C motor is already a built a V-TEC unit straight from the factory, sure you can make it better, but to stay strong for now on the reknown Honda reliability is just a priority. I took all the main steps one should take when buying a used motor. That included buying new belts, thermostat, all the pumps, seals, gaskets etc. I had all these things before the motor arrived so we would be ready to ROCK!

Below are pictures of how the motor comes shipped to your door. My parts layed out that were swapped into the engine. And beginning to swap them out along with re-wiring the JDM wire harness to easily work with the USDM fire-wall harness. Also a SLIGHT wire tuck, I did not feel the need to go crazy with it, I just wanted the motor in sooner rather than later - you can see I ran most of the harness under the intake manifold and the intjector connections come up between the runners - far from badass but better than stock!

 

Type R motor just sitting there waiting for its new home! Here are some more pictures for your guys viewing pleasure. In this first post here I took some pics so you can see how dirty the thing really was. Got some different angles on the engine bay. Just filthy. At the end there finishing up all the underbody connections with the exhaust and rear engine mount. Almost ready to pop out.

 

And the motor is out. I am sure that many of you know this, but for you guys considering doing an engine swap, as long as you have a few friends to help out and an engine hoist this part is super easy. Here are some pics of the old LS motor out and some pictures of things I wanted removed from the car. Cough cough A/C and power steering- who needs this sh*t?? lol

Following up with the before and after shots of the bay with some thorough cleaning. I would say it's miles better, but I will let you guys decide.

 

Looks pretty cool man. Makes me kind of want to get an Integra again and play around with it.

 

Clean car, good luck with build!

 

Are you keeping the cruise control and abs since you already got rid of ac and power steering???

 

Keeping cruise yes, I make frequent trips from here to Fargo and what not so it is convenient. And sadly ABS will also be staying for now. From what I hear it is a hell of a project to remove? But if I keep this car for a number of years to the point when I get a truck to haul the cars around to the events cruise and abs will most certainly be removed.

 

*Updates*

At this point in the project all we had to do was finish up the wiring harness and drop the motor into the car. Some of you guys might be wondering how to make the JDM harness compatible with the USDM one. Its quite simple really, all that is required is to de-loom a lot of the harness on the back side and switch the main clips around, while doing this you can adjust the lengths of the wires to further more assist a more "tucked" look. Its a damn near free way to make the bay much cleaner. At first I was also a little skeptical on doing this method instead of buying a new harness or using the existing one. But my friend was supremely confident and just said "Watch me". Haha and I am glad that I let him work his magic, it turned out great in my opinion.

 

As of now I am currently driving the car. Has 2 cel codes remaining which is the only problem and forseeable downside to not have a complete harness for this swap. The codes are 21 and 23.
Code 21- No vtec. If you do this swap into a non-vtec integra you will have to wire it in yourself. The integra has no wire what-so-ever for it and must be wired in.
Code 23- Knock sensor. Some people will say just to get a chipped ecu or hondata and disable this. But I looked into it a little and the reason for the cel is most likely because the wiring pin is out of place. So all we should have to do is relocate the pin and be good to go.

Other than the CEL's I will have to slightly adjust the throttle cable and definitely clean out the iacv. But no problems have come up other than these minor things. This build is really just beginning and I am very much looking forward to continuing. My new intake should be here tonight, and I will also be ordering a new exhaust. The car runs rather loud right now because the new header collector is 2.5'' compared to the LS 2 1/4'' inch exhaust. Also the JDM header bolts are at a different angle to the USDM cat bolts, making it physically impossible to bolt into place to marginally quite it down.

After the intake and exhaust a new short shifter and **** will be on order. Then for the true weight savings. The car before anything was change sat at 2740lbs with a full tank of gas and me in the car. We will see what we can get down to!

 

Are you using the jdm ecu?

 

Yes sir I am. It should not be a problem to get rid of the CEL's as we just have to run a vtec wire from the ecu to the solenoid and re-pin the knock sensor. Other than that my new intake got here last night. I did not want to run the AEM V2 for another winter on this motor. IDK how my car ran or never got water logged at times.

 

I do have 1 question though for anyone that knows the answer. With the CEL code 21 no vtec on, while driving around will the motor rev limit at 6600rpm because it doesn't get the fuel and oil pressure to activate vtec? or will it still rev to redline and just not activate vtec?

 

The new intake. I know its not the best on the market but I do like the way that it looks under that hood haha.

 

Haven't updated in awhile. I have got the exhaust on the car and love every bit of it. Will post pics this weekend.

ALSO for people following this thread, I have made a small mistake if you should call it that. When the motor came only the engine harness came with, the sub harness did not. Some friends and I were looking into rewiring the sub harness to be compatible with the engine harness but instead of repining almost the whole thing. So I opted to purchase a RyWire tucked harness. Should arrive next week and I will post pics of that as well.

 

looking good

 

Thanks bud, I'm very happy with the way the car has turned out so far. Next week when the harness gets hooked up and the car runs properly I will get some videos of the exhaust and a few pulls comparing the LS engine and the Type R. Even without VTEC wired in yet, I'd say the car is the same speed thanks to gearing. I am really looking forward to what the motor is capable of, it is already so revvy and high spirited.

 

Here are a few pictures of the new parts that arrived for the Integra.
1) B&M Short Shifter
2) Tanabe Hyper Medallion Touring Exhaust
3) Rywire B-Series tucked engine harness

 

I have now got the new Rywire harness all hooked up and the car runs great! No c.e.l. codes, no leaks or quirky noises so I am thankful. I will post pictures of the harness and exhaust soon. And as far as a video of the performance goes, well that depends on mother nature. We had an ice storm last week and the roads are slick as hell! 8800rpm to the front wheels and ice dont mesh. I found a small area of pavements last night and tried to do a little 1st and 2nd pull but the tires just broke loose, but you can tell the motor just wants to go and I LOVE the sound.

 

jdm ecu requires 95 oc gas used in japan,
ive heard it shouldnt be a problem expecially if you guys have 93 oct out there,
IMO I would run the US box

 

So far I have not had an issue with the jdm ecu, have roughly 1,250 miles on the engine. The highest we have here is a 92 pump, that's the only gas I put in it.