GSR Swap Story

 So I committed to the difficult decision of selling my first Civic, and starting a new project on another car.  My first plan was to put the new GReddy turbo kit on a civic Si VTEC, but even used Si's were rare and expensive.  I wanted a car with better performance, similar apperance, at a similar price.  So, after alot of thinking, I decided to go with a motor swap. I sold my Civic for $11,200, and planned to invest all the money in my next car. 

The motor arrived about 10 days later and was transported to the mechanics house to do the swap there.  The mechanic, Joe Comonte, had never done this swap, but was very knowledgable and resourceful.  He had all the equipment at his house needed.  The charge for the install was $550 for labor, and I ended up having to buy a few small parts.  Overall, had the motor been in perfect condition on arrival, and all the parts there, the swap would have taken no more than a few days max using hand tools and working in free time.  However, the ECU did not come with the motor upon shipping, and took an additional 2 weeks to arrive.  So the car sat, dismantled for two weeks with the motor in and everything except the ECU present.  The swap on my car was absolutley straightforward. There was nothing different about the physical install from a stock motor.  Everything fits like stock.  We took off the AC to reduce weight. 

Once the ECU arrived, we plugged up all the harnesses and searched for the VTEC wires to add on to.  However, all the VTEC wires appeared to already be on the Civic DX ECU harness.  So, we started the car up, and it started on the first crank with no problems at all.  I hadn't yet installed the 5-6 inch exhaust extension between the headder and cat, so the car was crazy loud. Now, it was time for a test drive....however, the car would not go into gear. As it turns out, the clutch fork was out of position and needed to be re-installed correctly to engage the clutch properly.  Unfortunatley, it required removal of the tranny to get to this part.  So, the car had to be towed to a local repair shop where they had a lift and power tools needed to drop the tranny.  The repair was done, and I went to pick it up, but it would still not go into gear.  Funny thing though, it would go into gear, but only if you pushed the clutch in halfway.  Any farther than that, and it would not go into gear.  Detirmined, I drove the car around for about an hour with the clutch all messed up.  However, the clutch seemed to begin to break-in, and by the end of the night, it worked like normal.  Problem solved. 

Next, I had to have an exhaust extension welded in to fill the gap between the shorter than stock GSR header, and the stock Civic cat converter.  The friendly men at Midas Muffler reccomended installing a flex pipe, which would be able to bend when the engine torques back under hard exceleration. This would prevent the exhaust flanges from snapping after prolonged stress. Personally, if the stock GSR doesn't need a flex pipe, why should my car? That is what rubber exhaust hangings are for.  But the flex pipe went in anyway. 

In conclusion, the total project came out costing me under $12,000, and that is with new paint and minor body work (to fill door dings), racing wheels w/ nitto tires, all the performance and suspension parts, stereo, and alarm.  The reason this was so cheap was due to my extensive research and shopping around for the absolute best price on everything. I probobally amassed around 40 hours of long distance calls to shops in CA, and hundreds of hours on the internet gathering info on the swap.  If I could reccomend anything to future swap canidates, it would be this:  Do your research on EVERYTHING, call as many places as possible to get best prices on parts and labor, try to do as much of the labor as possible yourself to save money, check the condition of the motor on arrival and before install to insure quality.  It is easier to repair internal problems (like clutch fork) and make adjustments while the motor is out.  Have all the parts available and ready before starting the install.  The total time it took for my swap to be complete was about 5 weeks. That is a long time to go without your car.  Make sure you mechanic knows what he is doing before he starts, especially if he has never done a swap like this before.  If you plan to do the swap yourself, familliarize yourself with all the steps before starting. Be prepared to run into problems during the install.  Don't start the project with "just enough cash to complete the swap".  You might run into problems like me, and not have the funds to do the repair.  Luckily, I had planned ahead for such an occassion, so I was able to finish the swap without racking up credit card debt.  There is nothing worse than starting a swap, and then not being able to finish because you ran out of cash.