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So I bought my 97 civic EX about 10 months ago. Car runs great, zero issues, has about 140k on it right now. I drive about 100 miles a day during the week and another 100 on the weekends. So this car gets to see the road alot, which means I get to drive the car alot.

I have toyed with the idea of swaping the engine for awhile and getting into a DOHC (mainly B series), but havent rulled out the idea of completely rebuilding the D16y8. I dont come from a honda background, but more of a Subaru background.

I want to build the civic out to basicly be perfect DD with a little more HP (180-210) and still get great gas milage (28+ would love to be in the 30s). Ill do all the work myself, very capable, but want to know some of your thoughts on two options.

Option 1: Do a swap with simple bolt ons either a B16a or B18c.

Option 2: Rebuilt D16y8 with either all motor or turbo (keep in mind the MPG goal).

Keep in mind aggressive is not the goal, daily driver, Im not auto Xing this car. Also trying to keep the build as low cost as possible, lets say $2,000 is the goal we are shooting for (this is just to do with engine, swap or build, nothing else). I want to keep cost of maintenance down as well, civic's are great about this.

Id love to hear of someones successes with builds, and what MPG your getting with them. Post up tell me what option you would go with....

 
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Bump, really not even one opinion about this build? Guess there isnt that many people on this forum.....

 
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If you can find a B16 for cheap, they are great platforms to build on.

If you're looking for reliability and gas mileage, I would not be looking at boost.

 
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Good to know, didnt know how SOHC honda with boost would be. The best price I have found so far for a B16 is about 2,000. I dont exactly call that cheap, maybe thats just me and maybe Im not looking in the right place. Whats about the best price you have seen a B16 for, and link it if you have a link.

 
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$2000 is cheap compared to a k engine which go for around $5000. A local junk yard might have one cheaper.

With a good tune and engine management you can get good mpg with boost but there is more to go wrong and more maintenance involved.

 
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To keep it cheaper you may just want to do the big three.. headers, exhaust, intake, and if you wanted to get flashpro or something like that where you can program it for better MPG.

Typically with these cars they are a perfect DD the way they are...the more you add to it for power the lower you MPG is going to get(for the most part, since some things help).

Search the site about swaps, its been done 1000 times, but requires a lot of work and is usually not that cheap.

 
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To get the power you want, you're going to definitely need to swap. You have to dump quite a bit of money into a single cam to get it to make good power gains. You're probably better off swapping a B16, doing some basic upgrades (intake, header, exhaust, slight tune, etc). You could probably make about 180hp or so to the crank which would be around 160 wheel horsepower. That would definitely liven up the car, as well as not drop you gas mileage horribly.

 
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2000 is not cheap in my mind, my project car (2005 WRX stage 2) and its engine is almost half (1200 motor only, 1800 motor and tranny) the cost of that motor and its just as reliable and makes even more power and can hold 20 psi boost on stock internals. I thought honda stuff was suppose to be cheap (cheap as in lower costing). 2000 bucks for a motor that makes 160hp, sounds like a rip off.

I think supply and demand is taking over that market. My reason behind this is think of the cost of making those motors, then tell me why it only costs 900-1200 for a RL 3.5 v6? So retarded! K20a motor is beautiful piece of machinery. Then again alot goes into making those motors, as well as the types of materials used. So that explains its high cost, but I still dont know about 5k for that. Thats almost the cost of a LS6 (about 6500) and you cant even try to tell me the K20a is comparable to a corvette motor. Dont get me wrong I love my imports but, 4cyc vs 8cyc, technically it should be half the price of the LS6, which is a balanced motor.

Im just saying I think the prices are a little skewed for those motors, thats all im saying. Id almost be better off buying another Civic w/B16 in it and swap it over. Cheaper.