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In my opinion finding a VX would be far, far easier. My car's previous owner swapped in the VX motor (so I can't vouch for ease/difficulty of swap), and looks like he did quite a few re-wiring tricks to get it all set up, and it still didn't run right til me and my cousin went through with multimeters and new crimp connectors. Have you crunched the gas numbers vs. the cost of upgrading to the VX motor? My car's combined EPA was 36... my lifetime average after 5800 miles is 44.3 mpg... total saved: $83... far less than the cost of the motor, trans, ecu, and misc. VX parts. I'm just recommending you consider the up-front costs vs. mpg return. You might do well selling your DX, take the money and buy a clean non-riced VX if its what you really want. My DX was ghetto-riced out at some point, and I'd never touch a riced car again. Ricing is like an iceberg, you can only see the tip of it, but there's mountains of problems underneath. Broken/stripped bolts, torn suspension bushings (from all that "high-speed" drifting), a smoked clutch (mine had turned blue from the heat) and birds-nest wiring hacks are just a few...
I don't know much about your DX, is there more you can do to boost mpg as-is without a motor swap? Just swapping to the VX/CX transmission would be dirt cheap ($130??) and no electrical or computer hassles, just instant mpg improvement. Or going up to taller tires would act like taller gearing, upping your mpg's. $3500 sounds a lot for a clean 17 year old car, but not sure whats going rate in your area. Seems like $2k-2500 would net you a real clean original one, at least around upstate NY. Good luck
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