Hey everyone. I recently rebuilt a stock civic engine (D17A2), including new valves, new pistons, new rings, and new main and rod bearings. The project was great fun and it got me thinking about doing something to another Civic I own, a 1997 Civic DX (D16Y7).

Since so many here on honda-tech.com have so much varied experience, I thought I'd ask: If you could build your car over again, what would you do differently? Turbo or naturally aspirated? Engine swap or build your existing engine? Different suspension? Different transmission? Different cylinder head/block combo? Any regrets with your car setup?

 

Slap a turbo on it, best bang for buck

 

Probably would have done K swap from the beginning, and AWD. That being said there's still some things about the B engine family I prefer over K's in our chassis, but the extra displacement of a K24 and the larger aftermarket would have been the smarter direction to go in - I didn't anticipate B-Series parts to start drying up as quickly as they have.

Would have invested in a Haltech Elite 1500 instead of S300. Otherwise, outside of those few things considering how much I've changed with my car I really don't regret many of my decisions. I may still go AWD sometime in the next year or two but need to finish my current stage first and see how that performs.

 

After watching the Bring a Trailer auctions. Probably should have parked it on stands in a bubble and waited.

 

Just travel back in time to 2005-2010 and scoop up as many Civics and Integras that were listed between $2K->$5K as possible and keep them as investments.

Crazy to think how saturated the market was with these cars at one point. So many of them were built like **** with half assed labor and ebay parts that a huge percentage have ended up in scrapyards.

 

No joke. But without all of them being scrapped from poor choices they would have never gone up in value.

 

It is kind of funny to me that an EG/EK/DC2 in good condition now sells for roughly the same price as an S2K. The price on S2000s actually hasn't jumped up that hard over the last several years, definitely not at the same rate as the Civics and Integras.

 

Here are some lessons learned after restoring my EG...

Lesson 1a - I love my EG, and as much as I hate to say this, I'd consider anything other than an EG simply because OEM parts are non-existent anymore and there just isn't a suitable aftermarket source for a lot of those parts. Even junkyards aren't holding these 5th gen civics much anymore (at least in my area). Finding good interior parts, clamps, moldings, body parts etc...its all junkyard scraps and most is garbage. For instance, I am currently looking for a sunroof motor for the EG (just to have)...and there is no aftermarket motor made (which blows my mind). Even the EK is getting harder to source parts for.

Lesson 1b - Buy a donor car...this is what I did and it was the smartest thing I ever did. Got lucky and I found a 95 EG Coupe with rear end body damage for $500 and bought it. Since I had a hatch, rear end damage meant nothing to me...only from drivers seat forward and some suspension. I got way more than $500 in parts out of it. In the end I scrapped it and made even more money back on it. If you are serious about doing a restore...this is the way.

Lesson 2 - I'd highly weigh the options on wrapping versus paint. Nothing looks better than a paint job, but nothing looks worse than damage to the paint job. I don't regret painting the EG (especially since I did the entire shell), but, sometimes I wonder if it is even worth it to paint anymore with all the varieties of wraps available.

 

I had a hard time finding a replacement sunroof motor for my Si five years ago. I'm positive that it's borderline impossible to get one now.

If mine ever craps out again I'm going to try to get the motor fixed internally without actually swapping the whole assembly, because like you've pointed out you simply cannot find these anymore. A sunroof motor from an EX 2dr/4dr model won't work, nor will one from an EK or any other chassis. Has to be an Si 3dr sunroof motor.

 

Good to know on the sun roof. 94 SI ABS and so far the sun roof motor still works.

Sad that it's becoming so hard to source parts. I thought the 91 RT Wagon was a pain to source parts 5 years ago.

 

I am hopeful that CAD and 3D printing continues to expand to the point where it's easier to custom make replacement parts for certain things like this.

Broken record, but legitimately blows my mind how quickly and how harshly the market for these tuner cars has dried up. Several factors I think have accelerated the decay of the Honda/tuner scene, and I don't see it bouncing back. Building a 90s Honda TODAY is the same as people building a 70s muscle car in the early 00s - Expensive, rare, and not as many people are going to pony up the cash and time it takes to do these things anymore.

 

OK, ive been doing this a long time and even I thought the EG EX motor was the same...but you are right, they are different. That is an oddity.

Fortunately, the motors are pretty stout. I don't see why it could not be repairs like you say.

 

eBay still has a lot of parts. You have to go on all sites like CL etc and you can find most parts. Some you’re better off refurbishing like I just had seats reupholstered. Some things are a trade off, I couldn’t find original fabric for the OEM seats so I said screw it and bought some thrashed recaros and restored those and will be reupholstering the back seats and probably door panels to match in a tasteful way. Most trim parts you can still find on eBay from Japan. Engine and transmission parts are available still. Certain things like sunroof motors, wiring harnesses etc are on eBay or salvage yard. I’m not sure the market is strong enough yet to have a restoration company for Honda’s but maybe in 5-10yrs time. Actually there is at least 1 restoration company for Hondas but I forgot the name… they make little plastic replacement parts for the dash etc. I’m seeing car prices creep up to the $15k-$20k mark and people are buying them since they know it will cost way more to restore and super time intensive.

 

Thanks for replying Chance EG. What head do you have on your K24? I've been reading the that it's popular to put a k20 head on a k24 block.

 

That's a great point. I hadn't considered how rare parts could be. @punk0mi, where did you find your donor car?

 

First thing you need to do is establish a budget.

adding a turbo kit will run you $1500-5k.

going K will be $5k-$10k

if you don’t have $5k-$10k and you want to upgrade within 1yr or less then turbo is your choice

 

I'm too invested in the B series engine setup to backtrack and do a K swap. My ECU, transmission, turbo kit, shift linkage, mounts, torque damper, shifter, etc etc are all dependent on B series. I don't have any plans to K swap my car now or in the future for these reasons.

The only big reason I wish I had gone the K route from the beginning is that K20s and K24s are now much easier and cheaper to find than B engines. The aftermarket for K's is still healthy and growing as well, whearas generally speaking B engines are a dying breed.

Yes - it is very common to put a better flowing K20 head on a K24 block, very similar to how people do B20VTEC or LSVTEC setups on the B series engine. The K24A2 engine has the best flowing K24 head out of the bunch as far as I'm aware (but still has different flow characteristics compared to a K20 head), as well as the best OEM camshafts (I think the 06-08 TSX Type-S cams are on-par with the K20A ITR cams if I remember right).

K20a.org used to be, possibly still is a great resource for K series engines. At the very least I'd rummage around their forums and do some searches if you're going the K route. My knowledge on K's is rusty and sparse.

 

what would i do differently?

to be honest, everything.
spent way too much money and time doing dumb things as a youth.

should have stuck with one chassis and just invested in that rather then buy, build, sell, do over.
im now reliving my youth and working on 2 diff chassis. its just different this time since i make a little bit more money, and have the space and i have the patience. both are being put together slowly, but it will be fun to have a car for my son, and one for me to cruise around when the time is right.

 

If I were to go back to the first Honda I bought in 1998, which was my CRX, I would not have bought it. I would have saved more money until I could afford to buy at the very least 96-2000 Civic.

I would have started with a B-Series GSR platform from the start and never went with a B16, Nitrous, my B20/B16 setup, no Jackson Supercharger phase and no All Motor Builds that I did over the years. So in short I should have started with a 96-2000 Civic with a GSR swap and started building it as a turbo car from the start.

Now if I could start all over again knowing what I really want and it didn't have to be a Honda, I would have started with a 69/70 Nova which is what I originally wanted. Since I really only care about Drag Racing and power this would have been a good place to start.

 

Think you'll ever be able to get into the 7s? Once you go AWD I'd expect you to start hitting fairly consistent mid or low 8s.

 

I think the car has enough power to get into the 7's especially with AWD. It will take good tuning and driving to get into the 7's though and I would be really happy with a 7.99 pass.

Now if I can get into the 7's I won't really regret not going with a domestic LOL.

 

(ignore my hopes and dreams rambling)

Really, if I could turn back the time on the car market, I wish I could have picked up a 2G GSX Eclipse back when they were still possible to find. As someone described it to me a few years ago, "an AWD 2G is more rare than a unicorn with ****"

I even considered buying a FWD model to swap to AWD using Lancer components, but crazy enough and unfortunately, it looks like it's actually a harder ordeal to AWD swap an Eclipse than it is our old Civics. Which is kind of ironic since none of our Civics (outside of wagovan) ever came with AWD from the factory.

 

Thanks for the reply. So I could go $10k if it comes to it. Do I presume that a k-swap would be on the cheaper end of the $5k-$10k range if I do all the work myself? I guess I started this thread because I'm not sure yet what I want to do. As far as goals, I want a fun and fast car to drive, but not necessarily for the track.

 

Thanks for the heads up about k20a.org. I hadn't heard of it.

 

So why a GSR swap? I've only heard of GSR by name. I'm not sure which engine it is.