H22 and B18 EK Coupe Owners
 

Will be swapping a H22 in my 99 Civic Si this spring and wondering if there are any owners in here with the same setup.

How do you like it? The car is my daily driver and wondering how reliable the swap will be.

Pros and cons? If you had the chance to do it again would you go with the same setup or something different.

Thanks for your time.

Your steering will be fine, don't believe the people that tell you it's too heavy and will result in crazy understeer. The end result in steering is just as much as if you had a B18 or B20 in your car.

Some weight reduction can totally eliminate that.
IE - removal of A/C and A/C mounts. That's like 50lbs right there.

This swap is a LOT of fun to drive.. You'll rarely rev past 4K and will still be pulling away from traffic.

Reliability wise, it's just as good as any prelude. I'd suggest going for an OBDI motor since their built stronger, Closed deck.

One con of the H22 swap is that if anything ever does decide to break in the engine bay area, you may have to pull the engine out to work on it. IE - Brake booster.

Oh and it's hard to sell an H22 swapped car. People fear it.

Cheap to replace if motor or tranny die.

Best bang for buck, especially if you can do the swap yourself.

Which would be enough to scare me away from the swap. Pulling the whole engine just to change the water pump or clutch or brake booster is simply rediculous. And you can pretty much guarantee at some point something will break, its the nature of cars, sh1t goes wrong.
If its the torque you are after go with a b20. Its a simple drop in swap, you won't need to pull the engine if you need to fix something, you won't need to buy custom mounts or axles, you will still have a shift linkage and not a cable (like with the h22), and you could always add a vtec head if your after more power.
But this is just my opinion.

yah you forgot to mention that this would also require you to take the motor out to get machined if going this route!

haha

Thanks for the replies guys.

After some research I've narrowed my choices to either the H22 or B20vtec.

The reason why I'm planning the H22 route is because its a fully built motor and would be cheaper, as well as more reliable in the long run, than doing a B20vtec.

Taking out the engine for repairs is a huge downside though.

it will all come down to how much money you are willing to spend.
if you got the money go k series....basically like doing a h series but its lighter and better performing.

if your on a budget then i recommend a b series....just because its easier to work with and easier to maintain.

a b20 frankie will need to get alot of custom work done if your planning on revving the crap out of it. in which case i also recommend just boring out a b18 motor instead.

for the price you could sell your car for, plus the price of the swap and labour, why not just buy a Prelude?? a Prelude is a sports car, the Civic is an economy car. the Prelude will be a superior car in almost every way. anyone who's ever worked on a prelude can tell you this.

This isn't true, at all.
Besides you don't need to rev the crap out of b20vtecs. A b20vtec in stock form can safely rev to 7500 all day long, and still make very good hp/tq....especially with bolt ons and some ITR/CTR cams. If you want to run bigger cams the valve reliefs need to be made larger or if you want higher than around 10:1 CR than forged pistons are required, this is the expensive custom work that Team Rukus speaks of.
So a stock b20vtec w/bolts isn't all that expensive, but a built b20vtec is very very expensive (this is true with any engine).
B20vtecs are as reliable as you build them.

Oh I totally agree with you in the fact that it is crazy to pull engines, but generally it's only for major things that you know are coming. Water pump and clutch you do when you swap the car and if you do it right you're not touching it for another 150K atleast. Things like brake boosters rarely fail on older civics let alone the newer ones. Regardless, this was a concern of mine when I did my swap.

H22 swap is definitely MUCH harder to install than any B series. The shift linkage is a serious pain in the ass to put in. To get the cable to reach with some slack you need to pull the undercar sway bar(on the si).

your right.
i based my opinion on things that i heard from people. no actual proof to back it up. I did hear that the cylinder walls on the block are weaker then any other b series so i figured custom work would be necessary ie. sleeving....

The more I look into it I think it'll be best to stick to a b-series swap.

I'll most likely go the B18C1 route for performance and reliability.

:D

B18C1 is a good choice as well.