LS/VTEC Head Swap - Still The One

Clutch Masters comes to the party bearing a lightened billet aluminum flywheel, a four-puck sprung ceramic clutch disc, and a pressure plate.

We momentarily focus our gaze upon the engine compartment of the recipient EJ Civic hatchback. There Castro has fastened two of the three Arizona Race & Machine billet engine mounts, the upper transmission mount and the rear mount on the sub-frame. He's not using a front transmission bracket or an A/C compressor bracket, which both link the block to the frame rails, but the polyurethane bushings in the mounts should be beefy enough to handle the extra loads.

The motor is slowly lowered into the engine compartment from above and rocked slightly until all the mounts line up. Then Castro goes to town securing the engine to the mounts.

Once the hybrid is in, the project becomes like most engine swaps. If you don't know your way around a Honda engine compartment, you'd best grab a Helm's, or better yet, get an expert. There is a routine of reconnecting lines that involves, among other operations, hooking up the throttle cable, fuel, vacuum, and coolant lines, reinstalling the radiator, and choosing an appropriate distributor. Rule of thumb is to get a dizzy that corresponds to your ECU's OBD orientation.

Fat Kid does a bang up job re-wrapping all the loom of the engine harness in black electrical tape, as shown by this segment snaking its way past the starter.

Castro's Edelbrock header didn't make it in time, so we got by using an old JG manifold for the story.

What's this? Why it's a Omni Power USA test pipe, a clever straight pipe that replaces the catalytic converter. The stainless piece is TIG welded, adjustable in length and features a removable center section. Bolt it in and kick that cat-induced backpressure to the curb.

For the street we're using AEM's hybrid-specific three-inch mandrel-bent aluminum intakes. They come in titanium-look powder coating only and, like the rest of AEM's intakes, feature a proprietary filter with a built-in air horn. For the dyno, however, Castro has an even more efficient induction instrument planned.

With the motor pretty much done, Castro turns his attention to tuning. He'll use a Hondata S100 kit to tune the P28 EG Civic EX/Si ECU.
The S100 offers many of the same features as the S200 without data logging, the three-step rev limiter, or the G-sensor. With an S100 a user can tune fuel and ignition tables, adjust the rev limiter, remove the speed limiter (if applicable), and program when VTEC engages. Even cooler, the entire system fits within the ECU casing; there is no external wiring. Our kit came with a chip, two DIP sockets, an EEPROM, a proprietary S100 board, a four-pin header, and a pair of resistors, all of which fit in our palm.