Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
When I blew my B16, I was rather upset at the thought of having to drop a larger displacement engine in, especially one with less peak power output. Oddly, I found that I improved my mileage when I swapped for an LS motor. After doing some reading, I can only conclude that it's some combination of leaner burn and the fact that the B16 is oversquare and the LS is undersquare.
The old D series might have been better for these purposes, though there's probably a lot of room for improvement in the B16 if you're willing to tune for economy.
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I'm not surprised the LS swap helped mileage. It has way more torque and WAY less peak HP. The LS is also tuned for normal driving of a larger car, where the B16 is tuned for sport driving a light car. When I did my B16 swap years ago, I found the gearing to low for normal driving. I would often start in second gear and be in fifth by 25 MPH. Unfortunately that put cruising at 60 MPH way up at 4400 RPM. Yes really! Since third gear was really messed up by the previous owner, I tried an LS transmission I got off EBAY for $100. I don't love the combination but, it works well enough for normal driving. 65 MPH is now about 3000 RPM, and if I flog it I almost can keep it on the big lobes. I don't flog it any more, by the way.
The thing that bothers me the most about working for economy with a B16 powered Civic is I can not get the ECU to go into fuel cut-off while off throttle. I believe I read somewhere, Honda did this on purpose too reduce emissions/per volume.
Sorry I just realised I went way off topic.