actually its not, i would know watching and learning from my friend that converted his 89 civic dx OBD0 to OBD1 from a 3rd gen ZC (extremely rare) and then after that he took it out and put an ls in there and then re did all that wiring. it wasn't that bad, he also made his own shift linkage by cutting like 2 inches off or something and making it fit. SO that saved him another 150. So basically if you are handy you can do it for cheap.