I have a 1991 Honda Accord LX with the four speed auto with the f22a1 and I'm wanting to do a f22b1 VTEC head swap. But the main issue I'm worried about and or wondering what kinda workarounds I can do is that the stock ECU obviously will have issues running the vtec so should I try to use a p28 or should I just not even bother with running a different ECU? I was thinking about doing a manually activated VTEC set up but it might be kinda jank and obviously won't give me the full gain in performance as a tuned setup. Should I try to find a ECU out an ex with the f22b1? Only problem is I feel like finding an ECU out of the ex's will be that it's for a manual and that an auto with VTEC especially the ex will be pretty rare to stumble across.

 

You would need a 94-95 Accord EX auto ecu. They are not that rare. Majority of these cars were automatics. You cannot run a P28/any other civic ECU or else your transmission will not work. Without the proper ECU the car would be dreadfully slow. F22B1 is economy VTEC and it is activated at a very low RPM(~2500). When it is not activated you only have a single intake valve active per cylinder and it severely hinders engine performance.

You need to remove the oil orifice plug in the block. There is a coolant hole in the front of the F22B1 cylinder head that will need to be tapped and plugged flush to match it to the F22A1 block. There is also a small amount of wiring and ECU pin swapping involved.

Honestly for the trouble and money involved it's really not worth the extra few horsepower. Unless you got a free donor car you're looking at $600-800 for maybe 8-10 horsepower through the automatic transmission.

 

[QUOTE=Aradin;53044193]You would need a 94-95 Accord EX auto ecu. They are not that rare. Majority of these cars were automatics. You cannot run a P28/any other civic ECU or else your transmission will not work. Without the proper ECU the car would be dreadfully slow. F22B1 is economy VTEC and it is activated at a very low RPM(~2500). When it is not activated you only have a single intake valve active per cylinder and it severely hinders engine performance.

You need to remove the oil orifice plug in the block. There is a

Damn I didn't realize and I couldn't really find any videos on that specific head swap. I was told from my research that it would be the easiest quickest head swap I could do for that car. What would you recommend as second best for a head swap mainly focused on the amount of effort, cost and if it will require any specific tools or not

 

I wouldn't recommend any head swap. If you could find an F22A6 cylinder head, intake manifold, and ECU that would be the most direct swap for you. The gains would still not be worth it unless the parts were basically free though.

Even if you were to use a good H22 cylinder head or similar and make a "G series" abomination, you would still make less power than a complete engine swap because of the low compression and smaller bore of the F22.

If you're looking for better acceleration the best bang for your buck would be a manual transmission swap using a shorter geared transmission(M2S4 or similar) from a 92-96 Prelude. If that's still not enough then it's either an engine swap or a turbo setup. DOHC engines for this platform have mostly dried up and whatever is left fetch a premium nowadays. Turbocharging is still a comparatively inexpensive option if you know what you're doing.

It's a fools errand to chase power on a stock NA automatic single cam. Just leave it alone and enjoy the reliability unless you really want to throw a lot of money it for little gains. My $.02.

 

Gotcha mainly what I'm trying to do and achieve is a small bump in low and mostly mid range torque and acceleration, nothing crazy I'm not really trying to chase numbers just a little bit of fun. The car is my daily and yes I know the saying "don't mod your daily" I'm not trying to do anything insane that's why the head swap seemed like a decent half-ish step for my goal. I'm probably just gonna end up using bolt-ons off the f22a6 that was my original plan for a small upgrade in driving feel I already got injectors off a f23 but I probably won't ever use them unless I'm doing a head swap on running serious mods

Really I'm just a dumb, young kid trying to have fun with my car on a budget, all within reasonability I don't wanna do a full motor rebuild and upgrade nor would I run boost on my stock trans

 

There are other ways to make some gains without doing head swaps and stuff. If you want to see some gains for cheap without doing much engine work then get a true 3" cold air intake that pulls air from the fender(~60 on ebay), get a generic 4-2-1 china header and have an exhaust shop put a 2.5" collector on it, grab a budget 2.5" exhaust(yonaka or similar, ebay brandless will sound like crap out of the box), and it should pick up a bit of power. If you want to go further down that rabbit hole you could get an adjustable cam gear. Advance about 4 degrees for more low end, retard about 4 degrees for more high end. All this stuff can be done fairly cheap and it's a good place to start and learn.

 

For a F22B1 head on an auto Accord, the stock ECU won’t run VTEC. A P28 or EX ECU might work but check auto compatibility. Manual VTEC works but gives less performance; a standalone ECU is best.

 

Yeah right now I'm running a cold air intake set up similar to what you described, it bends towards the fender right next to the battery and I was possibly gonna extend the hole that runs thru the fender for the stock air box housing, and add a little tube to help direct air intake the front mouth part of the intake filter. I also just ordered some metal mesh and I kinda wanna set up one of those tube things I forgot what they're called but they look like an ITB for even more airflow and actually setting up a proper cold air intake. This also might be overkill but I was thinking about putting some of that fiberglass heat wrap over the air intake tube. I have DC ceramic headers 4-2-1 but I need the downpipe and my buddy's brother has a downpipe I can use Im just waiting to hear back if I can buy it or not. If not I'm probably gonna weld my own Y pipe so I can run those headers. My current setup has stock everything including resonator but I've bored out the cat and added a 25in glass pack to kill drone and rasp cuz I was running a side exit