Quote Originally Posted by EKVTIR-T View Post
House in Kew over $1mil..surely you can afford something better

I suggest selling it and upgrading as trying to get power/torque from that engine is futile
Lol, I wish that was my house, it's my parents house. I live there for free and I eat there for free and they bought me my first car too (the Skyline GT-T). But that's where all freebies end.. I am still a uni student (studying my second degree now) and I pay for my own fees, bills, petrol, cars... etc. And that's obviously very fair. So I am actually on a budget. I picked up this Civic for way cheaper than its price, I bargained hard with the seller and got the price down couple of grands. So if I sell it right now I'll make about $3,000 profit on it and it still has a valid roadworthy certificate for 3.5 weeks and registration till December 2013. With that pristine condition and low kilometers, I think this car will be sold in two days. But I really like it, I wanna keep it, but just make it a bit faster. I am not trying to win trophies with it or anything, I am only asking for a 10% increase in power and torque up from the stock figures, am I asking for too much? and I'll be keeping it for long time to come I understand it's an economical car and it was never designed for drag races or fast acceleration. But I just want it to at least match the competition. It should at least be as powerful as the Mazda 3, Lancer and Ford Focus. But surprisingly my model Civic is least powerful in its class for that year model cars :/

I've always heard good stuff about Honda, so I sold the Camry and started looking around for Perludes, Integras, Civics.. I test drove a few Subarus Impreza and Liberty and I drove two 2007 Ford Focus Sedan too.

All the Perludes and Integras I found were beaten up and abused, they handle well but they were all either on their second or third engine/transmission or were still running the original engine and transmission but have very high kilometers! And by looking under the bonnet you can tell that these cars were all been molested, played with and modified. One of them had a loose wire loom rattling under the bonnet and they were all just hideous. Same story was with the 2 door 6th gen Civic. Overall I found the manual cars to be more abused than the equivalent model automatics. But I was only looking for buying a manual.

Subaru Liberty RX and Impreza RX are the two Subaru models I was looking at, I was looking at manual ones. They were exactly the same story as the Hondas, they were all molested, had mods and loose wire looms under the bonnets due to unprofessional home jobs being done on them at home by the owners... etc. :/ I've also read a lot online about Subarus and apparently their reliability ratings are lower than Honda, Toyota and Nissan. And they are pricey to fix due to the boxer engine design and they consume a lot of petrol in comparison to the competition.

The Focus was fast and agile and drove really well. It puts 109kW and 191Nm of torque from a small Duratec 2.0L 4Cyl engine, but its built quality was very low. The one I drove had 64,000km and was 2007 model and I just couldn't believe how bad it rattled. Every time I go over a speed hump or any pothole on the road the glove box would rattle in its place! And it was only a 5 years old car, so I assume after it hit 150,000km it'll just be in pieces.

After I sold the Camry, I decided that I wanted a zippy little car that's also good on petrol. So I thought the Civic fit the description, I even asked a few mates before buying it and everyone told me "you can never go wrong buying a Civic in such a pristine condition".. And every single person I knew told me that Civics are fast little cars and they are good on petrol.. And after reading a bit online I learnt that Honda and Subaru have their road cars equipped with the stiffest chassis for best handling results, and Honda makes the highest quality well built cars in these class.

Quote Originally Posted by Sean628 View Post
don't know much about civics but vtec engine from same chassis might be a better option? depends on your budget, if it's only 5-10 hp gain and whole lot of trouble don't think it really worth it.
The VTEC version puts 96kW and 155Nm of torque, only 5Nm torque advantage over the normal engine *facepalm*

I am so frustrated! There's definitely someone out there that modded that D17Z1 engine. May be there's an aftermarket ECU for it sold somewhere with a different re-map or something? There's definitely something to be done to improve its performance!

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your help..