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first off thanks to anyone that reads this, im a long time lurker on this forum for troubleshooting on my car, but never posted. i bought an 01 civic lx for my first financed car three or four years ago. since ive had nothing but epic fails with it. while paying it off ive had a lot of lovely problems. taken great care of it and love the way it drives tho. and best part is its recently paid off!. last year i had the infamous head warp over the coolant side. had it fixed (great reliable honest mechanic ive always used btw so it was solid work) and within a week exhaust in my radiator again. kept blowing my coolant overflow line off and running coolant dry, i clamped it down like an ***. not long after main coolant line blew off engine and covered the car behind me from front to back in coolant it had so much pressure. long story short i need a new engine. i know of two or three other people in this town that have had the same thing happen with this year civic with the stock d17a1 that have had the exact same prob after replaceing head. so i want to swap engines. i already had to have my tranny replaced 40k miles ago when it went out in the middle of east st louis at 3 in the morning . so are there any engines out there better than the stock d17a1 that bolt up to my automatic tranny? or any other suggestions? i recently got laid off so im on a budget and i cant rightly get a job where i live without a reliable car, small country town ya know. any help would be much appreciated!

 
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cheapest swap would be a d17a2 vtec from any 01-05 civic ex. make sure you get one from auto trans because some of the parts are different. you also need an ex ecu as well from the same year that the engine is from, and to get key flashed to the new ecu. and to run the vtec solenoid wire from the motor to the new ecu and pin it to the correct spot. if you want full plug and play, just go with another lx/dx motor. lil bit better would be k20a3 (base rsx motor), and best would be k20a2 (type-s) or k20a (type-r) but those will require a different trans (manual).

 
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Thanks a ton gearbox. Ive spent freaking hours and hours searching forums and trying to focus my google fu and havent found a straight answer bout that tranny. With only 40k on it and it costing me three grand i dont quite feel like paying for another right bout now.