Honda VTEC Engines - Editorial
05-28-2009, 03:40 PM
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Honda VTEC Engines - Editorial
Honda VTEC Engines - Editorial
Read about the history of Honda's VTEC engines threw the eyes of the editors in the Editorial section of this month's issue.My friends and I thought about swapping a DOHC VTEC B-series engine into one of our '88-'91 Civic hatchbacks not long after Honda began selling the '92-'93 GS-R. We were pimple-faced, young and awkward, and a bit overzealous, but none of that got in the way of us saying amongst ourselves, "Hey, why not? The chassis looks similar to the Civic's, so why wouldn't it work?" But we never did find any B17A GS-R engines. Instead, the first DOHC VTEC engine I ever swapped into an EF chassis Civic came from a del Sol, shortly after the car was released. The Civic was a base-model, '89 hatchback, one that we'd almost settled on swapping a ZC into, maybe even a B18A if we could find one-but both of those had been done already. Besides, the problem was that B18As weren't all that abundant in 1994. I visited a couple of local engine yards in search of one, but what I found at a wrecking yard in nearby Fontana changed everything. Perched up high on a rack of smashed metal was a nearly new but beat-up Honda del Sol VTEC, complete with its B16A engine, ECU, and hydro transmission. We bought it all, everything we needed to do the swap and, in hindsight, all sorts of things that we didn't need...like the transmission...and the ECU...and the under-dash wiring harness. Never mind the fact that the del Sol's hydraulic transmission wouldn't work in the old hatchback (nobody really knew that at the time) or the fact that the ECU wouldn't plug in (nobody knew that either), we had ourselves a real-deal twin-cam VTEC engine, and we were going to make it fit.
Photo Gallery: Honda Histroy - VTEC Engines - Honda Tuning Magazine
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Read about the history of Honda's VTEC engines threw the eyes of the editors in the Editorial section of this month's issue.My friends and I thought about swapping a DOHC VTEC B-series engine into one of our '88-'91 Civic hatchbacks not long after Honda began selling the '92-'93 GS-R. We were pimple-faced, young and awkward, and a bit overzealous, but none of that got in the way of us saying amongst ourselves, "Hey, why not? The chassis looks similar to the Civic's, so why wouldn't it work?" But we never did find any B17A GS-R engines. Instead, the first DOHC VTEC engine I ever swapped into an EF chassis Civic came from a del Sol, shortly after the car was released. The Civic was a base-model, '89 hatchback, one that we'd almost settled on swapping a ZC into, maybe even a B18A if we could find one-but both of those had been done already. Besides, the problem was that B18As weren't all that abundant in 1994. I visited a couple of local engine yards in search of one, but what I found at a wrecking yard in nearby Fontana changed everything. Perched up high on a rack of smashed metal was a nearly new but beat-up Honda del Sol VTEC, complete with its B16A engine, ECU, and hydro transmission. We bought it all, everything we needed to do the swap and, in hindsight, all sorts of things that we didn't need...like the transmission...and the ECU...and the under-dash wiring harness. Never mind the fact that the del Sol's hydraulic transmission wouldn't work in the old hatchback (nobody really knew that at the time) or the fact that the ECU wouldn't plug in (nobody knew that either), we had ourselves a real-deal twin-cam VTEC engine, and we were going to make it fit.
Photo Gallery: Honda Histroy - VTEC Engines - Honda Tuning Magazine
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