Well then your friend doesn't know what they're talking about. The B-series has far more power potential.

Since this is a '92 car the simplest thing for you to do would be to get your hands on a JDM B16A swap from a '92-'95 Civic SiR or SiR-II and go from there.

What exactly do you mean by "build up"? Are you actually going to disassemble it and replace all of the internals?