A few more pics I hope you don't mind forgive me I've never been on a forum or done anything on a platform such as this hope I'm not being to obnoxious

 

I call bull**** on the buick skylark. 😝

I've hauled with my 2.0L impreza and can only get about 500 pounds before she struggles. The fuel tank on a skylark weighs that much alone.

 

The tank was empty other wise you're not far off about the tank and I'll admit I rounded up it was closer to 10 than 20 miles. I am pretty sure it 14 miles but I miss the turn and ended up having to circle a couple blocks and I never said it didn't struggle. Starting from a dead stop took a bit and to my amazement my clutch did survive. Probably only because I only caught one red light but rolled a couple yellows. I was more worried that the breaks would fail if I needed to stop in a hurry, and the only up hill was minimal. I was at shifting rpm in 2nd most of the time (I very seldom focus on my tach) it has no power at lower rpm and I wasn't going to go fast enough sit in the power band in 3rd. a picture was taken I think but wasn't my phone and my attention was on the cars, traffic, and the mission. But it did it. I put about 350 400 on the rack all the time. You can feel it for sure but the weight transfer is amazing. If I fill the bags to the point of almost solid and 2 guys bouncing on the very end of the rack it un loads the front but it bent the rack rated at 500lbs. that's why I replaced it with about double the wall thickness tubing.

 

Nice stuff, I welded up a tow hitch to the rear L factory tow brackets of my 1989 honda crx. As you stated though, I do have a K24 in the engine bay so I don't really struggle with the hp/tq side of things but it works for everything I throw at it which isn't much,

 

Way cool, I knew I couldn't have been the only one to do it. As I said i stitch welded mine to the struts and I ended up using the space were those brackets bolted in to bolt the top bag mounts. I couldn't imagine doing much with out the bags. It squats and bottoms out with my speakers alone never-mind anything else without them. When it comes to this engine swap I really don't know what to do or even if I am looking at a good engine to do it with. Any way I could pick your brains and try to take advantage of your experience? Is this jdm k24a3 rbb tsx engine, with 6 speed manual transmission and ecu I'm looking at a decent way to go and the $3000 its going to cost me a far price to pay for it and any chance I could get a list of what I need to do it or better idea of just how big a hole I'm digging for myself?

 

Good on ya for saving one!

K swap is a very big job! More power and more weight. Not sure how well the chassis will deal with that.

Do everyone a favor, and lose the steering wheel cover. Those things will slip at the absolute worst time, which can lead to expensive repairs or hospital time.

--DD

 

Thanks for your input any and all input is probably more valuable to me than most it genuinely helps me to decide how ow I go about things. Case in point, I've started picking up hints of concerns regarding the chassis's strength or ability to hold a k24 and I'm hoping someone would iterat a bit more on why or to what extent this could be an issue. In my head if its ability to hold the wight or power than a straight forward solution would be to strengthen and reinforce the areas that would struggle to tolerate the additional forces. I don't plan on doing a full cage but I have been trying to figure out where additional support is most needed and to what extent. At one point i was considering a all together much different direction and if it could even be done but decided it would be too sacrilegious but hear me out. My love for the crx is the awesome memories with my best friend in his even thow it was probably more duct tape than not and we literally drove that poor thing into the ground. I love its size and looks i miss my 944 I love little hatch backs not necessarily honda. At least on paper it looked do able. I had opportunity to get a late 90's s10 extended cab that was t boned so the right side door and fender were trash cab might be saved bed was fine and driver side was fine but I would have sold all that to recoup some money. The frame wasn't bent and being an extended cab the measurements from front wheel to fire wall were only off less than an inch and the detentions of the cab to the whole of the interior of the crx were amazingly close. The s10 being a v6 the end of the Trans landed inside the crx wheel base. If I were to chop the s10 frame 37" to match the crx that only left a 10" drive shaft to the rear axle obviously that wasn't going to work but what would is replacing the rear axle with i believe it was a c3 irs and suddenly the only real issue was trying to relocate some things under the hood and a smaller enough radiator too be able to put a hang a fiberglass front end pretty much not ru a hood and let the v6 lower the ride hight and body drop the crx in place of the cab. The width was only 2" on either side so wide-body kit. And aside from the v6 sticking out of basically no hood it would look like a wide body crx. If not for not having the space to work and hassle of selling the c10 leftovers I was going to make the only all American v6 wide body that the only thing Japanese left would be the shell. And if I sold the leftover parts at close to there worth the cost wasn't far off from what a k swap is looking like it will cost but a whole lot of work.

 

No reason the chassis can’t hold the weight of the K24. May want to upgrade the torsion bars to 27mm bars to help support the extra weight.

 

OK thanks ! That seems reasonable. I haven't looked that up yet do you know is that part going to be difficult to find or what or where I might source them from?

 

Very easy to find go to HeelToe and buy a pair

 

My car going from B16 to K24 gained 24lbs. 5lbs would be the result of the deck height the rest is weight gained through other aspects of the swap. We scaled the car before pulling the motor and after the swap.

i will take the extra 24lbs with all the extra Hp and torque I gained. With the B16a2 I put down 145hp and 105ftlbs. My K24 puts down 220hp and 200ftlbs. Both stock motors only have bolt ons. More than makes up for the 24lbs.

 

But this is a 1st gen going from an EW or D15 drivetrain up to a K-series. I don't know what the weight difference is there.

The difference in power is going to be significant, going from ~80 HP to, what, over 200? All going through the front wheels. Larger torsion bars will help, of course, but what about all of the mounting points? Will there be flex between those mounts? Will the brakes be able to cope with more weight and higher power?

Add in a lot more weight with the trailer...

Lots of unknowns; I really do not know enough about the 1st-gen chassis to even begin to guess at what might need to be reinforced.

OP, this is a big project. Cutting up a small truck and draping a CRX body over it is also a big project. I don't know which would be bigger. I hope you understand the actual amount of work that will go into either route. Both will change the character of the car pretty drastically.

--DD

 

The EW with trans is about 309lbs. A K20 is about 405lbs and a K24 is about 413lbs.

Engine bay will absolutely support the motor. I didn’t add any reinforcement to it. If you are just driving it around on the street you won’t need huge brakes but just about any civic brake caliper and larger rotor will bolt on.

if all you want is a bit more power and don’t want to make your life stressful for a swap. Go get a 1.6-liter DOHC 16-valve 4-cylinder (D16A1) engine out of a 1st gen integra. These drop right into the 1st gen CRX bay and make more power and torque than the EW.

• 1986-1987 Models: 113 hp (84.3 kW) at 6,250 rpm
• 1988-1989 Models: 118 hp (88.0 kW) at 6,250 rpm

vs the EW with 91hp (59.4 kW) at 4500 rpm