Hello, new post er to this forum but i have followed for a little while now. I am very impressed with this board by the way, good stuff. I have been intrested in selling my VW GTi 16v for a honda crx or Si hatch. German parts are ridiculously expensive not to mention the 130 dollar stock spark plug wires for the DOHC motor. Over all it is a good car, quite quick but fenicky and i hate the CIS-e fuel system. Now, the honda fuel injection has always seemed like a work of art compared to the VW out of date system, but is it a reliable system and does it accept mods well? I have seen a bunch of crx's and hatch's w/ b16a for sale locally, but do swapped engined cars have reliablitly problems? I know that is a very broad question, and it all depends on the work but in general, would i be better off with just a simple ZC swap in one of the two cars? I would be intrested in driving the car daily and use it for some stoplight street action and a auto X car. What would be my best bet for the best bang for the buck. I plan on spending 3500 on the car or less, what would the xperts on this board?

 

if iwere you i wouldnt buy a swapped car. they can be reliable but you never know if the swap was done right or not. first decide what youll be doing with the car. if you wanna swap then look for any crx with a clean body. if you wanna keep the stock engine find an si with low miles. i suggest you do the swap yourself because youll learn a lot about the car and know what areas to trouble shoot. read HT a lot also, it helps.

 

If you're going to autocross, and you don't have much if any experience at this point, I would search out a stock engined Si model. If you get a swapped car it will bump you in class and make it harder to be competitive. Also there is alot to be learned driving on a stock motor. It won't be GTI torquey, and not nearly as fast, around mid to high 15's in a very good car (16's average), but it's way more fun in the corners than the GTI could ever dream of being. Spending $3,500 on a car with a B16 is probably a bad plan as that's kind of the lower end of that price spectrum and it's more likely that corners will have been cut on a car in that range, which will lead to a higher cost of maintenance. I think your money is better spent twoards a nice body first and you can always upgrade it later if you are happy with the car. While many parts are less expensive than VW's, don't expect a honda to be way cheaper than a VW, you have euro parts, we have Japanese Domestic Market, and as you start to understand the difference in the quality of different brands you'll see that it's still a game of you get what you pay for. Though, there are many more available parts and they are realtively easy to find. Just to reiterate my point here, haveing a clean chassis is the most important part of owning a 13+ year old car, and parts can be had easily after that.

 

I did the same thing you're thinking about doing. I gave my heavily modded 84 gti to my fatherinlaw. It was a great car but there was a limit to how much hp I could milk out of the engine. Let us know your decision.

 

sp were you happy with your choice? The one thing i love about My GTi is the interior, it really is killer for an 88. The fit and finis is real nice and seats just rock. How does the interior stack up against let say a 91 crx si? These hondas are double A arms suspension all the way around correct? How much of an improvment wiill it be over my solid rear beam VW?


Thanks for the responces