Hey guys,
I recently acquired $2500 dollars by selling one of my older used cars, and I have two options: doing an engine swap, or buying a turbo kit. I have a 1995 Honda Civic DX auto, and with either one, i plan on doing a 5 speed swap. The car has about 152k miles on it, and has been kept up pretty well through the years. With this money though, I was wondering which you guys think would be better to invest in? Thanks!
- John

EDIT : Forgot to mention, it has the D15B7 motor in it, sorry about that.

 

Well, I'm not going to claim I know everything there is to know about engines, but it would seem that it would be better to go with an engine swap. From what I've heard, a tranny swap would be a pain in the ***, as well as expensive, and putting a turbo on a car with 152k miles might not be a great idea because you never know what kind of wear might be on it that you can't see. This is if you don't plan on rebuilding it though, but I honestly don't know if you will have the funds to do that. That is actually a question I have as well. I'm planning on doing almost the exact same thing, only I'm going to start with a manny tranny and instead use that money to rebuild the engine, then turbo it. Same budget and everything. Hopefully we both can get some good info about this.

 

thanks chips. Now does anybody else have any info for both of us, lol? Also, what all is included in an engine rebuild? Now that you mention that, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. The 152k miles did seem kinda high to me, and a rebuild and then a turbo kit sounds like a good idea to me. Thanks!

 

depends. you can get complete rebuild kits from like an aftermarket company for like 400 bucks but you would be just rebuilding your motor back to stock...You will have to piece all your aftermarket parts together if you want to run higher boost..nobody that i know of makes a complete kit for that price range.... anything with completing an engine is gonna be really pricy

 

hey john i would go with the engine swap. like chips said you dont know what kind of stress the stock internals have already have on them and if its bad then the additional stress from a turbo would just make it worse. But, on the other hand you could just replace out the stock internals like the inake/exhaust manifolds, valve springs, valves, heads, etc. Its up to you man. when im done with my sisters civic we're gonna race........on the track that is.

 

Personally, I would wait till I had about another 1k, then do a gsr swap with new timing belt, water pump, clutch and flywheel. then you have the manual trans, a newer motor with less miles, and almost double the stock HP. then the next time you come into some money, you can turbo the already powerful gsr motor (that you know is in better shape) and make 240-250 WHP instead of going through all the hassle and downtime of rebuilding the stock motor and turboing it to get not much more than 200 whp (that is with a good turbo kit, and a good tune. and some aftermarket internal parts for longetivities sake)

 

lol ive been considering the same thing not sure wich i wanna do .. im ither going to swap my current 1.6 l v-tec for a Teggy Type-r or Gsr engine then turbo that cause my mechanic told me it may not be worth to turbo the civc engine so ive just been doing sum reserach since then. but if any 1 got any inputs lemme kno