Forgive this incoming wall of text but I figured I might as well get everything out on the table in one dreadfully long post. I'll try and sum it up as short and simple as possible!

To start off, hello there - I'm Mandi! I'm 22 years old from Maryland. Last march 2009 my boyfriend - who I've been with for 8 years now, got his car stolen and totaled. A random drunk idiot stole my boyfriends car - which was a Mazda 3 speed and drove it into someones garage crashing into 2 other cars and totaling the mazda.

With all of that said aside, my boyfriend's insurance didn't cover all of the car, and now my boyfriend is still paying on a car he doesn't even own. So to get a replacement car was not an option, the only thing he was able to do was buy his coworkers 1992 Honda Civic Dx hatchback that had 200k+ miles on it. So he got it for like 1200.

Since then the car now has over 240k miles and its already had problems where he goes to start it and it wont start, so he waits 2 minutes and tries again and it will start. Fyi I apologize about my lack of knowledge in the car department - I'm just desperate to help him so I figured I'd come here.

Here is the dilemma. Right now his engine is a D15B SOHC VTEC. Between rent, utilities, groceries, insurance...etc he really hasn't had an opportunity to save much/any money. Right now he has about $1800 saved up and I'm willing to pitch in at the most 3k to helping him fix up his car.

The car is completely gutted - theres no AC, no air bags - I guess the person before him raced it, I'm really not sure. My boyfriend wants to do an engine swap and is looking at engines online right now, I think it was like hmotorsonline or something like that. Anyway, He has 2 options. He could get a B16A 92-93 HC Engine for $1900 plus shipping so thats like $2200. This is not including paying for the labor to have someone swap it. Or and this is the part where we aren't sure if it will even work, he could get a ZC 88-92 DOHC for $650 and then $300 for the transmission and chip, so $900 not including shipping so then $1250 total including shipping BUT it doesn't come with the clutch, the flywheel the axiles the mounts...etc all the stuff the B16 does.

Okay SO with that said, If he were to get the ZC 88-92 DOHC would the parts he has in his car now work with it? Would he have to order all new parts? I heard that the parts for the ZC are really rare and pricey.

I really just don't know what are options are and what to do. I don't even know what we should be paying for the labor to get it done, or which engine to chose. If you've read all of this thank you, any advice/input would be greatly greatly appreciated, I signed up on these forums because it makes me really sad how upset the boyfriend is over this and he is really scared the car is going to give out any day now.

Please give any honest advice you can!

 

Bad connections in the main relay often cause the "cranks but won't fire, but only sometimes" no-start situation. This is a zero cost fix if you take the relay apart and resolder it. After trying that known "lemon" part you can start checking other things. One thing for certain, it's not going to be the engine itself causing the starting problem; it's some small part outside the engine.