91 Civic engine swap

Hello all! Gonna change a engine from one car to another.Both are 91s. Ones
a standard trans and the other auto. .My question is can u do the swap with
out removing the trans in either of them? Just the engines.Might take less
time if possible..Thanks

 

You are...seriously...new at this, aren't you?

A '91 Civic is not remotely the same as, say, a RWD '75 Corolla.

Yank the engine/tranny as a unit, or drop the tranny by itself. There will
be zero time savings attempting to leave the tranny in place, and it is
probably impossible to do this in any case. I can't imagine you'd have
enough room to push the motor far enough left to disengage the input shaft
from the clutch.

Also, if you swap auto for manual or vice versa, you WILL need to change
whole lot of other stuff, including the ECU.

Who dreamed this one up, anyway? You?

 

Actually I have changed the engine in this car befor. I was arguing with
someone that you couldn't do just an engine swap without removing the tans.
I am keeping both trans with each car they came from. I am only swaping the
engines.The car with the auto is in mint shape but the engine is really
tired.The one with the standard tranny has a rusty beat up body but an
engine with low kms. So hence swaping the engines. Keep the good one and
sell the other. I hope that explains it more.

 

I still don't think it's possible to pull the input shaft out of the clutch
or torque converter with the tranny installed. You don't nearly have enough
room to move the engine to the left. There's barely enough room for a
timing belt change.

Civics of that era had different engine controls. For example, automatics
had EGR and manuals did not, which means the heads are different, as are
the ECUs. If you wanted to put an engine from an auto into a manual, you'd
have to transfer the ECU, all the EGR hardware and wiring, and lots of
other stuff to make sure the Check Engine light would stay quiet. Or else
you'd have to know exactly what you were doing in order to make the
existing ECU think the engine was the same.

This is a big project. And if your state has an emissions inspection, you
will need to be certain you've transferred everything over that needed to
be, otherwise you'll fail.

It would be far, far better for you to locate an automatic Civic from which
to rob the engine.

 

It seems to me we had this sort of thread a couple months ago... if not
here, maybe in alt.autos.acura. The upshot is: it's a bunch easier to remove
the engine and tranny as an assembly. Come reinstallation time, I can't even
imagine how hard it would be to align the input shaft of the tranny when the
gearbox is fastened down and you have to maneuver the engine to get it lined
up.

Mike