Integra Engine Rebuild
 

I'm planning on rebuilding the engine in my car (early 90s Acura Integra) this coming summer, but don't know where to begin. I don't know if its a good idea to rebuild it and add a turbo, or else keep it naturally aspirated. Also, I'm not sure where to begin looking in terms of rebuild kits.

Any advice would be appreciated greatly - and I'll be sure to photodocument the rebuild when I begin.

If you've never done it before find a friend who has. Or else you'll be done and have 3 nuts/bolts that you don't know where they came from, and will have to take apart the whole engine to find out.
As for a place to find the kits, check Honda/Acura forums and ask around.

If you need engine kits, pm me I know a person that can get you a kick ass high performance kit for a good price.

Go down to Autozone or Pep Boys and get the Haynes book. Study and memorize it, then use it for reference when you do the rebuild.

Yea, a good friend of mine has rebuild a bunch of sports cars - and I've got the Haynes manual. When it gets closer to the time, I'll drop you a line, merker. :D

I'd actually recommend the Helms manual. They tend to be a LOT better on Honda books than Haynes or (the worst) Chiltons. I would also suggest visiting crx.honda-perf.org - a lot of those guys have Integra motors in their CRXs and can probably tell you as much about them as the designers could.

As for N/A vs turbo, well, that's kinda up to you. Turbo is cheap power, but you have to tweak it, and you have to make sure your cooling system can handle the loss in efficiency due to an intercooler being stuck in front of the radiator. You also have to either know what you're doing or find someone who does or you can find yourself in a lot of trouble very quickly. If you decide to go with boost, I'd probably build the engine up while I was rebuilding it so it could take more than 9lbs, which is about as much as you'd want to put on a B18 with stock internals.

You have another option here as well - an LSVTEC build. Basically you take a B18 (integra) block and mate it to a B16 (del sol vtec, civic Si) head. Locash Racing has been doing this for years, and it's a very common engine now. (You can then put the B18 head on the B16 block and sell it to help finance this).

www.team-integra.net

They have an extensive forum for all things Integra

An excellent resource in my opinion

Excellent, thanks for the link - I'll check it out.

Yeah, no prob. I use their articles all the time!

Also, you may want to check out the tech & model-specific forums at www.honda-acura.net. :)

yeah.... I'd stay away from the hayes manuals. They suck.

Depinding on what you do, it may be more economical to have someone else rebuild it for you. It's no walk in the park (but then again not too hard if your dedicated).

Consider finding a motor from a newer car at a junkyard. It won't be brand new, but you will get a motor with newer technology and most likley more hoursepower and better gas milage.