Honda Lean Burn D15B 3-stage VTEC

[rkcarguy]

Washington State.
I stopped by my friends shop(that bought my japan engine import business a few years back). They deal in hi-performance engines but acquired a Honda D15B 3-stage VTEC engine in their last shipment.
You can google these for alot more info, but basically it's the best of both worlds, honda took the VTEC-E lean burn engine and applied yet another stage of VTEC to it which kicks in a "wild cam" offering approx 130HP. It's compatable with the 92-00 Civics but best fits the 92-95's by swapping the intake manifold. All the performance guys aren't interested in it, and I think it's an awesome piece of technology not to mention only offered in Japan and Europe for 1996-1998 model years.
To properly run it you'll want to use the ECU and wiring harness from a VX and add a apex-i VAFC using it's VTEC function to engage the wild cam and richen fuel mixture...or just leave the 2nd VTEC solenoid unhooked if you just want a replacement for your VX engine. I guess it could be used in a CX as well without hooking up VTEC at all but what fun is that
I'm using one of these in my proposed rear engine project, but I don't need three of them
It's complete with intake, distributor, throttle body, and CVT auto tranny. Basically the whole engine trans as cut from the car. The CVT is interesting but really big and heavy, I've never played with one just recycled them, but it comes with the engine or he call remove it to save shipping weight.
While I don't know the mileage the JDM engines typically have under 100,000km or 60K miles.

Jerry's place is in Bellingham, WA and he'll be glad to compression test it for you, let you pull the spark plugs and poke around, etc.
He'd like $600 for it, phone # is 360-224-4007. Willing to ship but local pickup is obviously free.

[SVOboy]

That sounds like a good deal.

On a side note, do you know much about importing? I was thinking of dragging a car home with me from japan this summer...

[rkcarguy]

Importing cars is a big no-no as they do not meet our safety standards, and less than 25 years old is not allowed. A container shipment is over $3000 + another $500 for trucking and then tariff's, so it's not really worth it unless you do it for business with some volume. Jerry does alot of business with people who want to ship things back from Japan(military people stationed there, etc), but can't do complete vehicles.

[SVOboy]

Aw, shucks. I might try to figure out something through canada with an importer.

I'm thinking about picking up a honda beat,

[983stage]

I would like to add a few things about this motor. It is an obd2 engine and best fits 96-98 civics. It is best to run the original ecu (p2j) and figure out the wiring to make it work. Although this is a more complex swap it is deffinatly worth it. I am getting 50mpg highway with aggresive driving in hilly terrain.

[rkcarguy]

That's probably true. I have friends that do the chipping and tuning and have all OBD-1 parts and ecu's, so that's the route I'm taking with OBD-1 instead and it may not be the easiest for everyone. Nice to hear you're getting 50 highway out of it.
Less than $1000 for prius MPG with more power is worth every penny.

[983stage]

yea it's running pretty good, I am using the the stock p2j ecu with custom wiring, my biggest problem right now is that the fuel maps on the japanese computer are set up to run 95 to 110 octane so it putters a little running 93, I was thinking of getting high end spark plugs. Any other suggestions to fix this.

[rkcarguy]

That's one of the reasons I'm going with the OBD-1 chipped computer, it's not that hard to do an OBD-2 to OBD-1 conversion.
The OBD-2 ECU pushes the AF mix right up until the knock sensor starts reading, then backs off. With our crappy octanes it may be constantly hitting that early knock threshold and not be running very happy. Try backing off your base timing a little and see if that helps(twist dizzy).

[rkcarguy]

This motor sold and is no longer available FYI.
They OBD-1 converted the EX sedan and tuned the engine to run the low and mid cam. Haven't heard anything back good or bad regarding mileage etc...

[FullRacePhil]

Here is mine... I am running Hondata S300 on a P28 ecu and using the auxiliary nitrous output through the purge solenoid pin to engage the 2nd "low-cam" VTEC (fuel and timing control are available in the nitrous outputs). I turbo charged the motor for better fuel economy and it works pretty good, A/F around 22:1 and getting 55+ mpg daily.