The Mini Me-My Little Hybrid

The whole theme of my daily driver project is cheap. From the ground up, this car is on a definite budget, unlike the CRX. There are some hand-me-downs from the CRX, and other parts that were either fabricated or acquired for a good price. The engine was no exception. I could have spent some decent money and gotten a B-series motor, at least an LS. But that would leave me with less money for the race car. So D-series it was. Fortunately, the hatch came with a D16Z6, only thing was the bottom-end was no good, and the head had a few (3 to be exact) bent valves. So naturally, the first thing that came to mind was a Mini-Me. My variation on this budget-minded hybrid uses a D16Z6 head and a D15B2 short block. Although I do lose some displacement, I do gain some compression ratio. I am not too sure what it is exactly. This is due primarily to the B2's flat-top pistons which will offer more compression than the Z6's dished pistons. So after changing the 3 bent valves and putting the valvetrain back together, I fitted the VTEC head onto the B2 block. I also made sure to remove the oil jet from the DX bottom end as well. With the head secured to the block, I changed the water pump and bolted up the intake manifold. I slightly ported the manifolds runners and port-matched the manifold's entrance to the size of a LS throttle body. For more info on Mini-Me's, CLICK HERE
Here are some pics of the motor being put together.

The Assembly

Here is the little hybrid in the assembly process.

My Modified 88-91 Si Distributor

Here is the Si distributor I modified to bolt on to the Z6 head. This is the front-bottom leg with a fabricated let to allow it to bolt up to the head. The upper bolt also fits due to the fact that I changed to upper mount on the cam cap to a non-vtec cam cap. It took a little modifying to the VTEC rocker arm assembly and valve cover, but it works. I'll try and get a better picture of the entire area.

The Finished Result

Here is the completed motor in the engine bay of the hatchback. It is attached to a Si transmission. Hopefully the motor will stay together.