Delia the Kswapped Del Sol

Welcome to my Passion project. 1993 Honda Civic Del Sol Si. The premise of this car is simple enjoy the least enjoyed 90's Honda and have a time machine that took me back to 2006 when I couldn't afford to fix up a Honda how I want to. I've owned damn near every example of a 90's Honda and the one that always eluded me was the Del Sol. I had to convince myself how bad I wanted that open top 2 seater feeling because it was always "heavy".

The cars I built in the past include EK Civic CX and CRX HF. Those cars were bare bones light cars with manual windows and door locks no AC no Power Steering and built like any peak 2000's Honda fan boy would love. This is supposed to be a comfortable weekend car. A car that I can hop in and drive anywhere but also something that can be polished up and taken to the local car show/track day.

Let's rewind to January 2022

Pics taken on my super cool Iphone 6! I had been out of cars for about 3 solid years. I had sold my last project which was my 2000 Mazda Miata that I had for 6 short months. And I was driving around in my 2019 BMW 3 Series auto lease I was looking to get out of. I knew I wanted a Honda but wasn't sure which type. My mind went to the usual suspects Integra's, Civic's of all varieties, and a few other non hondas.

Finally this little thing popped up on Marketplace. I had never owned a Del Sol but always thought it'd be cool to have the top off and enjoy hearing VTEC with no roof. $1900 and I was the proud of owner of this little car. It had the original D16Z6 that was honestly on it's last legs but it had 220k miles (just breaking in!) and everything beside the AC worked. I knew it was a great start and since it shared basically the same underpinnings as all 92-95 Civic's and 94-00 Integras I knew it was going to be easy to swap whatever I wanted into it.

After a few days of driving this beast I quickly realized everything was trash. The suspension was the worst level of blown I had ever experienced. The brake pads were squealing. And the snow tires on the LS Mesh wheels were starting to chunk off. All things that can be fixed. My first purchase was a set of Enkei RPF1's in black with some of my favorite street tires the Yokohama Advan Neova tires in March 2023.

From there I went ahead and decided to fix the horrible suspension problem. I spent a lot of time doing research on suspension. I was looking for a street style suspension that I can crank up for track days. Tein has been a proven suspension company in the import world since 1990. I knew their company was the right fit when Technical Innovation is what their name was derived from. This really made the car fun to drive again. Pairing with the Rear Lower Control arms the car handled like it was on rails.

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I enjoyed the car for a couple more months but the one thing that was always nagging me was power. The D Series was always just out of breath.......

October 2022

It was inevitable that I was going to swap the engine. I knew that I didn't want to rebuild the D series or turbo it. Hondas for me are all about naturally aspirated goodness. My driving style especially for these cars is curvy driving. With that thought in mind I started searching the junkyards and copart and found a 2009 Honda Civic Si at the auctions. The car had 140k miles.

The first startup below of my newly acquired k20z3. I was over the moon. And aside from the car rolling off the trailer too fast. It cranked over with a new battery. I was over the moon! Video below.

From this point I knew I had to get the engine out and getstarted on my swap.