so I just picked up a 96 civic coupe with a D16y8 swap for cheap, I don’t think he’s really done anything beyond that and a sh*tty cold air intake. I want to know what I can do with this to improve mostly the 0-60 since I don’t ever actually race but I’m sick of crap cars ripping on his poorly built thing.
Eventualy I do plan to turbo it since I don’t want to swap but I want to know if there’s an upgrade path I can take leading up to that, ie throttle body, intake manifold, injectors, something called a p28 or something (comp?), transmission, and recommended brands. I ain’t looking for super duper cheap which is why I’m taking the path, takes time, but I can’t shell out thousands for it either.
Any help is appreciated
and yes I tried searching for the last week but there’s just certain question I can’t ask on a dead thread

 

Get a socketed P28 ecu with a custom basemap chip to start you out. Those ECU's are universal, and work with any D, H, B, F and K series engine so if later you do an engine swap, you can just swap chips.

https://www.hamotorsports.com/socketed-p28-basemap-package.html

Here's where I got mine, they also sell injectors and fuel pumps (in case you want some better injectors than your standard 240cc ones that come with your d16y8) You don't HAVE to go all out on Hondata, neptune, ktuner, wideband gages and stuff for now, you can sort that all out later when you get more into it.

 

Don't waste your time, there's nothing much at all you can do to drastically improve performance without a power adder or rebuilding the engine and head. Save that money to put towards a turbo kit. You can piece together a kit for fairly cheap to get you started and push 200whp reliably out of the stock engine.

 

Set your goal first:

Above 225whp?
or
Below 225whp?

Check the vitals of your engine. How is the compression? How many miles/ How is the timing belt/valve clearance? How many miles? Is it an auto or manual? Are you leaking or burning oil? How do the plugs look?

 

Read the greyed out threads of this tech section.