How many engines has your car had? Part 1

Of all the cars Hasport has built over the years my favorite is the Yellow 1988 Honda CRX. And it's not just my favorite it seems, I get more questions about this car than all our other projects combined. Hasport originally bought the car and I used it as a daily driver. It replaced the red 1990 CRX I was driving, which eventually got an H22 transplant and turned into a drag car. BTW that red CRX went on to star in a one hour special of the show Pinks on Speed TV, but that's another story.


It's gone through many iterations: D16, B16, Supercharged B16, and three different Supercharged K-series engines. It started with the Craig Short, he owned the car before we did. He swapped a B16A1 into the car. It was featured in Sport Compact Car in around 2001. Here's a link to an archive of the article. I don't have a picture of the engine at the time, two hard drive crashes in the span of two days erased almost every picture I took before 2002. John Thawley took the original photos for the article, I'll see if he might have an engine photo he didn't use.


Even though Craig said he'd never sell the CRX, Hasport bought it from him a short while later. I don't remember the circumstances but we were very glad to give the car a good home. Almost immediately I got the itch for more horsepower. Since I wanted to road race the car rather than drag race I decided against a turbo. After some discussions with Oscar Jackson I decided to use a modified version of the 99-00 Civic Si Supercharger kit.

The car was tuned using a Zdyne (remember them?) programmable ECU and put out a healthy 250 HP and almost 200 ft/lbs of torque. The car was stomping fast too, mid 12s in the quarter (yeah I dragged it) and very fast down the straights on the road course. It took a precise foot not to break the front tires loose rolling on the throttle coming out of corners. 

Armed with the supercharged B16, this is how the car went to the Super 2NR TV Honda vs Nissan Challenge (No Links). The car was pretty fast at the event, unfortunately I was not. After the race the engine wasn't quite the same. I think I had hurt a rod bolt with an missed shift. It was time to build another engine. This time I decided to build a bored and stroked B16, actually a B19. Along with the built engine, Oscar Jackson gave me some cog belt drives for the supercharger to try out. I started to source the parts, get the block sleeved but before I could finish, another engine swap trend started to take off. Time to change directions.

Next time Part 2 – The K-swaps.