### Honda Civic Modernization: Engine Swap and Upgrades Explained

Linus Tech Tips transforms an old Honda Civic into a modern powerhouse with innovative upgrades and features.

### Modernizing a Honda Civic: From Rust Bucket to High-Performance Machine
* 🚗 Previously on Linus Tech Tips, the team made significant upgrades to an old Honda Civic, including adding **Android Auto and power windows**, but the engine began to **overheat and leak oil**.
* 🔧 The project is set to modernize the Civic further with a **K-Series engine swap**, new wiring looms, and a DSP for upgraded audio, all while avoiding modern car issues like **data selling**.
* ⚙ The team plans to remove the current engine and transmission, replacing them with a **K24 engine from an Acura TSX**, which will **enhance performance significantly** from the original **89 horsepower**.
* 💡 The project scope expanded unexpectedly, leading to the **replacement of suspension, brakes**, and the **addition of a manual transmission**, despite some initial confusion about the plan.
* 📦 There were logistical challenges, including customs delays for parts, but a backup plan involved using **parts from another car** to ensure the project **stayed on track**.
* 🎶 The audio system will also receive a major upgrade, featuring **sound deadening materials** and a **miniDSP for enhanced sound quality**, ensuring a **great listening experience**.
* 🏎 After extensive modifications, the Civic achieved a dyno-tested output of **180 horsepower**, effectively **doubling its original power** and making it a **much more exciting vehicle**.
* 🎉 The project concluded successfully, showcasing a modernized Civic that incorporates **advanced technology and performance enhancements**, transforming it into a **completely new car**.

Previously on Linus Tech Tips, we've made great strides modernizing the old vehicle with Android Auto, power windows, and this sick-ass paint job. But unfortunately, the engine has been having some problems. It overheats, leaks oil, and most recently developed an Australian

[Music] accent. Good day, mate. That's right, we are here to modernize this Honda Civic with some nice fancy bits, like new wiring looms, a dash, a H-Tech, and the train SPS. Know what this is? K-Series engine, that's right. And the best part is all of

this modernization is going to come without modern car nonsense, like selling your data to the highest bidder. We've also got a brand new DSP to bring the audio into the 2020s. And frankly, this project has gotten out of control. LMG has literally no idea what is on the go.

You just say you're working on a crappy Civic and everyone shows up. What I do have a clue about is how we paid for it. Massive thanks to The Ridge for sponsoring this video. Without them, this project would not have been possible. Flights from Australia to Canada are not

cheap. So make sure you support the people that support cool projects. What's even better is you can get a free AirTag money clip with any wallet order over $69 by going to ridge.com/LinusUpgrade. Ridge have also started their early bird sale with some big markdowns

on popular wallets, like tobacco brown leather and lavender. Find out more at ridge.com/LinusUpgrade. [Music] I have to say I feel like this has gotten a little bit out of control. When we first discussed this project, we were going to be performing a couple of

tasteful modifications, but can someone please tell me what the plan is? Love to toss this engine out in the bin. Yeah, K24 Honda's best engine, arguably. In so, we just take this piece out. Yes, uh, that and the transmission, everything you can see is coming out in

the next hour or so, and then we have all of that and a pallet of stuff and another pallet of stuff. And as a bonus, we're going to pull everything else out of the car as well that's underneath it: exhaust, suspension, brakes, the whole lot.

And change all that. Alex, you were responsible for controlling the scope of this. I said multiple times to him, "Is that going to add scope?" And he was like, "It's fine. What's scope?" Just two more questions. You guys have seen the car now. Is is this really worth the

effort? I can't answer that, but we know that it we we know that it leaks oil, we know that it knocks. Do you know how much power it made? 89 horsepower to the wheels. Not bad. That's bad. We know it's automatic. We should change. We can change

all this. The engine just needs to go. Are you turning it into a manual? Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We're also doing a sound system. Is that scope? No. Why are we changing it to a manual transmission? What is that even a question? This guy's only got two years.

He doesn't understand anymore. Now tell me, was this engine ever designed for this chassis? Like, was there a version of this car that had this better engine in it? Not in the US. Now there was a hatchback that came with a K20, and this is essentially the same as the

Acura RSX or they call it the Integra in Japan so that chassis is almost identical to this the difference being that on the K series the engine sits over here transmission sits over here yeah so there's some stuff welded onto the frame rails that prevent you from

just just bolting it in so that's why we make a mount kit so that you can then bolt in what used to not bolt in and that's your business that's my business Godfather of K swaps very cool so we're going from 1.7 L to 2.4 so we're well to

me not a car person I hear that is we are going from a sedan engine to an SUV engine not really we're going to the TSX Type S engine that's actually the engine that's going oh okay I thought you said it was the same one you have in the CRV

I did cuz I put a TSX engine in my CRV I don't expect you to remember but there will be a test later TSX RSX SI but it's my brain is swimming with Honda stuff but also the engine that's actually going in is from an Odyssey it is but

it's the equivalent of the American one thing I do feel like car people underestimate though sometimes is the complexity of something as simple as what you're doing right now because I don't know you know where the proper point is no but other people don't know

how to bond 10 gig fiber to make 25 GBS and what kind of whether they should use a aggregation switch or a normal switch like this is all stuff that you oh yeah fine it's the same you know what I love though there's a real DIY sense that I

feel like tech people and car people all share it's like they just love hacking stuff building things like building a PC, building a car it's all in the same wheelhouse. Oh, oh someone put something under it while we were talking like nothing. Everything in here is going to get

replaced so we're going to change the suspension, we're going to change the brakes, we're going to change the calipers, we're going to put new drive shafts in it. I don't know, these calipers look pretty good to me. They look good

but they're not big enough cuz we're going to make it real fast. It has to stop as well. It's like a safety thing apparently. This is the stock shock absorber, it does what it says, it absorbs shocks. That's the spring, that's the

damper. Um, these often get very, very worn out over time. So if you're modifying a car like we are, it's a good time to upgrade them, which we are doing. And that is a fully adjustable one, meaning we can adjust the height of the car and we have

some control over how the car handles as well. The suspension, that's a complete replacement unit. So you put the original one completely in the bin, you put that in your car and you have a great time and your car looks way better. This is the back end of the car,

the rear suspension. It's independent, meaning that that side can go up and down independent of this. The sway bar kind of joins it together to make it handle a bit better. All this is going away, we've got new suspension to go in and also new arms and new brakes. It's

kind of another game I want to play. It's going to be called "Which part on the table is worth more than the entire car?" I'm going to go with this one. It looks pretty, but no, he'll probably trade it. If you had one of these, you might get a

whole car. Is this aluminum, though? Uh yeah, it is cast aluminum, and then it's got all like breathers and stuff, so all that collects all the oily air. And yeah, it's it's cool. How about this one? Headers. This has got to be worth more

than the car. This is great, cuz this makes power. We like this, cuz it gets the exhaust out of the engine. Um, definitely worth more than the car. Um, a really nice piece, all mandrel bent and welded and stuff in there. I wouldn't even be

surprised if this cable harness is worth more than the car. This this is one of my favorite things, cuz you can spend 2 or 3 days wiring this from scratch, or you can buy one of these that has all the plugs and connectors, and you just maybe change

a couple of things here to get it to do what you want, depending on what computer you're using. That's super cool. There's a lot of folks that make that kind of thing. Yeah, there are all over. There's a huge aftermarket for these sort of parts.

And um, yeah, just saves time. We're taking the dash out. Yeah, we're going to take the dash out. We're going to replace it. Oh, oh, I guess we need to put like a shifter in it, cuz it's manual now. Like no, not like the Fast and Furious, big taco.

Thing no no no no we're going to put an LCD screen in it we're oh we're oh we're going to put a screen in we're going to put a full HCK dash in it what yeah oh my God this seems so unnecessary custom

colors miles man an adapter for this particular car how good is that so that will read all the information from the H-Tech ECU directly up on here and we can have different settings different alarms different colors this piece alone is worth probably 3 to 4X the value of this

entire car but wait till you see it is going to be worth every penny when you see this sort of riding on a part it's come from a wreak up so this has been replaced at some point in this car's life oh hilarious lower miles so we have

no idea how many kilometers are on this engine then Alex asked me to be a screwdriver fairy and just kind of come around and get you guys all an LTT screwdriver thank you it turns out we already have one of these cuz we bought

one oh cuz we made a little surprise for you you bought you know you don't have you didn't have to yeah I know but but then it wouldn't be a surprise oh I see so this is the new shifter that's going to make it manual wow that looks like

it's also another thing that's worth more than the entire car yeah but we got one of your thingo and we actually adapted it that's going to be the shifter are you kidding me how cool and it's going to be usable so you can pull

it out, fix your computer, and then put it back in your, get your shifter, yeah, thought you might like that. All right, so that is a subframe that holds the engine in. The engine's still being kept in by those two mounts that are on the top, but all our brakes and all this

stuff can go away. Next step is to pull the engine out the top, okay? So final stages now, this is, we're getting there, coming out, it is. It goes from rust bucket to to empty rust bucket. Yeah, Alex, this is Ariana's, yeah, what, what is this called, like engine, engine

crane, engine hoist, yeah, that's Ariana's hoist. She had the misfortune of owning a rotary. Imagine if it was like this at your dentist, up a bit, come on, come on, what, your dentist isn't like that? Which way do I twist it? Uh, counter any

clockwise, down. So did you just say any, clockwise, anti, anticlockwise, anticlock? What I've gleaned is that they've actually never done this before, like they've done this, but every other time they had proper equipment and they dropped it out the bottom, yeah, and so

the engine, she's stuck basically. It kind of seems like it, uh-huh, just a bit. Okay, worst case, we know friends right over there that have a proper lift. Oh, yeah. Would we have to put the wheels back on it to drag it on there, drag it over

there or oh, nice. What made you guys decide that this was worth all the effort? Power, what's, why are you overclocking stuff? No, no, I mean you guys coming all the way up here to work on this piece of, cuz we like you guys, cuz we know that there's a

lot of fans here that like what we do and also we get to hang out with all our mates yeah okay all right this is fun okay I it doesn't look like it now beautiful where it belongs not in the car so the problem we're having is um

all the parts that we shipped about a week ago from the US are stuck in customs uh so we're getting on our phones and we're just trying to work out a backup plan in case uh that stuff never arrived cuz we' only got like I

think 72 hours to get this done DED finished driving everything finished so if we don't have that stuff in the next 24 hours we're in trouble so the backup plan is to get either an RSX or a TSX um we can use those parts and then then get

some of Brian's parts like shipped overnight or maybe shipped to Washington and do a midnight run to go pick them up yeah that might be what happens we'll see did I just hear you correctly the engine that we're putting in here is not here not here Washington's a different

country right yeah it is yeah that's where the engine is in Washington wait we don't have it yet no we have other stuff to do but at some point we're going to run out of stuff to do when we have no engine when were you guys going

to tell me this yeah there's cars in the car park with engines yeah actually I think your camera guy's got the same engine in his car and he actually he said we can have his engine so we're going to pull his car apart exactly what

we just did and put his engine in this and then when the one from Washington eventually makes it then you guys can put that back in cuz you'll see how to do you know how to do it now yeah why does everyone look so worried what are

you worried about there no it's in a different country it's fine we don't have different countries next door like you do oh I see where we stashed the original door openers you just hucked them in here just in case he ever needs

them yeah all of the crap from the projects was just in the back of Lou's car which he never removed correct but maybe he will now that we have vastly improved it you see this I do this trunk panel yeah that's a trunk panel right

complete garbage yeah so what we're going to do okay so this can go in here barely but then you see this hole right here yeah Sebastian just finished what's going there oh it's little LEDs it's the same pattern that's on the uh bomber

jacket on the inside oh cool so that's going to be over the sub and it's going to be just filled with RGB it's going to be amazing oh my god let's talk car audio and how to make your car sound extra sick the first thing you have to

do is just completely blow apart your interior that is mandatory but the second thing that you can do and that doesn't require a large investment is to put in sound deadening this stuff right here is fantastic and even if you don't want to be removing your speakers and

Stuff like that, sound deadening in your car, will make a very noticeable difference. The next step is to get power. We are going to have all of our amplifiers in the rear of the car, which means that we need power in the rear of the car. This right

here is some 4 gauge wire from New Concepts. They sent over all of our RCA cables, terminals, and all of that stuff. Just make sure to do your math because if you don't have the right size wires, they will set on fire. There's really

easy guides online on how to do that, so just look it up. Don't bring your car to the ground. Speaking of not lighting your car on fire, make sure to have fuses right beside the battery. This right here is a 100 amp one from New Concepts as well.

And this cable is running through the firewall and will eventually be attached to the battery once that is actually inside of the car. Next, you need the audio signal from your head unit. We were able to run RCA cables up here because we have an aftermarket head unit, but if

you want to maintain your factory OEM, you might have to use something like the LC2i. This will convert your speaker outputs into usable low-level stuff on the RCA that you can throw in the back of your trunk. Also, make sure to get the

Pro model. I have the normal one right here. Took it out of my car. Sounds way better with the Pro. The signal coming from the front is going to be going into our DSP right here. This is the miniDSP 8x12 DL. This is really the star of the

show there's absolutely no way to make a car a good listening room. Like think about it, like in a home theater, you can add sound any, you can move around your speakers. In a car, that is just not possible. You need windows, which are hard

and they are very reflective for sound. So we're going to try and compensate for that by using room correction software. It can do second-order impulse filtering. What that means, I don't know, but I can make the computer make this make it sound incredible in there. Everything's

going to be in phase. It's going to sound sick from the DSP. We go into our amps, we're going to be running what's called a fully active setup, which means that we do the crossovers in the DSP. That is going from like the woofer in your door

to the tweeter up top. Normally, you'd have a little box that takes care of that, but instead, we are doing that with computers. That also means that we need a dedicated channel on the amp for each individual speaker, which is why we have a big amp for the fronts and the sub and

a little amp for the rears because frankly they don't really matter. Don't upgrade your rear speakers. We're going to because Pioneer sent over stuff, but you don't need to. It's really fun to hold this. Oh yeah, wow, that felt lovely. Uh-huh.

Do you want to pause there for a sec? Uh yeah, hey Mar, you want to come back here. Great timing, Alex. Nice hat. Feels great. That's good. That's going to give you lots of protection from the Canadian sunshine. Are we leaving it up? No, we need

to take it off because we have a wing to put on. Have you seen this? Do you know this at all? No. I want to see it. The guys over at AeroFab, they make custom VW spoilers and stuff for the most part. They don't do Hondas, but here we have

He's actually stuck. We went and bought another trunk lid because they're super cheap and it's way easier to 3D scan with it off. Do you want to do it? It's made for this car specifically. It's made specifically for this car. Oh, that's so cool. Can I open it?

Yeah, let go. Oh my God, what the hell is this? This better be for a Porsche. No, this is for a Civic. That's really... Oh yeah, it's carbon fiber. A nice way to tell if a wing's legit is if it has an actual

arrow foil shape to it. So if you look here, it legitimately looks like a plane's wing. Oh my God, this is huge. Put it on. Yeah, go. All right, have fun, Jake. Oh, bloody hell. I'm going to put it on backwards. You have instructions. Just follow them. It's not that hard. Jesus

Christ. Actually, it is pretty hard. I looked at them. It's this is like a race car part. It's not the most simplest, naturally. A wing of this magnitude, magnificence, one might even say, needs to be mounted pretty securely. I was kind of

worried about it, but they actually kind of reused the stock mounting points for the trunk, which is great. But this bracket, it doesn't sit on top and bolt through up here. It needs to go through the entire trunk, kind of like that. I'm going to have to

do a lot of cutting I think this is going to be noisy oh there's nothing in there why why am I doing all of this hello you're not going to hear it not going to hear it at all sorry Alex hello Jake oh was it

muffled no not really sometimes cars fight back a little bit they don't want to be modified it's starting to fight us just a little bit now it knows it's nearly time to start it [Music] our customs agent took the day off so uh

we just traveled 3 hours but look at this we've got a Brian we've got a K24 in the truck things are looking up hell yeah yes you did it the case swap can continue So the plan is our engine has arrived we're going to get that into that we can't do

that without these things which Brian happens to make these are the mounts we make on our CNC at work and this is the kit for this particular engine with this particular transmission so this unlocks being able to put that engine into that car which never was supposed to be in

here this bolts on like that we lift it in we drop it in we mount it up and that's one step closer to being done yeah you're in working this is exciting bit that engine is not supposed to be in there and it's going to make this car so much better so

much faster this is an electronic throttle body in a car this age you've normally got a cable but we are going to upgrade to an electronic throttle body that means you've got a pedal inside the car that sends a signal to the ECU to the

H-tech in this case, and then the H-tech sends the signal here and tells this how far to open. Now, why you want to do that, you get a smooth idle. You also get the option of cruise control, and it all happens in that ECU unit which bolts

onto our intake manifold. Speaking of cruise control, if we're adding all of that new stuff, we need some way to control it, which is why we have this nice little keypad here. We made up a little aluminum piece that we're going to just epoxy onto the stock thing and

we also have the controller for our DSP for the sound, so all that goes in there. It's going to be beautiful. So, L us, we're about halfway through. What do you think? I am honestly blown away, like hearing you talk about how the throttle is no

longer cable controlled, like now it's all electronic, and we can like add cruise control to it. And I saw you guys goofing around with the RGB controller over there, and you're putting underglow on it, which by the way is not legal here.

It's legal to park, right? You just can't drive with it. Sure, this wasn't even in the country this morning. This barely fits, dude. Well, just, we're going to have to cut the bonnet a bit because it's going to hit here. Are you kidding me? To cut

bits out of the bonnet, but this engine in, like this, fixes everything that was ever wrong with this car. The gearbox is in, the special mounts are in to hold W those M mounts look beautiful. That is some gorgeous machining work. Brian made them and brought them up. And so have a

Look inside, it's all starting to come together in there, although it also looks a bit messy. No way, you guys! This... Oh, am I allowed to? No, you're good, you're good. That's actually the first time it's been used. It just got put in. I

don't know if I'm going to like, you know, break anything or whatever, right? But like, wait, oh yeah, obviously you'll put in a clutch pedal, I suppose. Well, yeah, we kind of haven't done that yet, but it's like we call this... we call this forbidden

spaghetti over there, like that wiring, but all that will be gone and it will look a bit neater. Dude, this is so stupid and it still functions. You can remove it and you can use it as a screwdriver. Still fully functional. That's fun. Oh cool. Never be

bored in traffic ever again. Original rocker cover. Awesome red rocker cover with red wrinkle paint. H, so good! Hey, look at that, that is beautiful. It looks mostly... yeah, it goes the other way, doesn't it? You know what, listen here you two. Yeah, that mostly

mint. Oh, I can't wait for this to leak down right onto the audio that I'm putting in right now. Yeah, now that we have power for our speakers, we need to physically put them in. For the fronts, we just made up these little adapters. We 3D

printed it out, and once we put the speaker in, we're going to be adding in these fast rings. This is just some foam that goes around your speaker so that it mates up properly to the door because if you have any gaps there, the audio can interfere with itself and it's a bad

Time for our tweeters, we got a little bit fancy. We took our A-pillars out, 3D scanned it. You can see our targets right here, and then made a little jig that is going to mount them just really nice and great. Something like that. Now I just

need to spend the next, now I just need to spend the next several hours wiring everything up. It's going to be not very fun, but as long as you're methodical and do things like marking down where all the speakers go, it's not all that

hard. Oh my God, bit of a moment of truth here. Does the wing smash the rear window? Let's find out. Mother, oh dude, actually, oh no way, is it going to clear? You got lots of space, dude. No way. Oh my God, it doesn't, it doesn't hit. Of course, once again, huge

shout out to the Ridge for sponsoring this, as you can tell we have spent many a dollar on all of this and without them none of it would have happened. This has been awesome, so thank you guys. Let's get these banners on. We've got our wheels

here from Super Speed, they're a Canadian company, and these are flow formed, which means they're both light and kind of cheap. We also got Michelin Pilot Sport All Season 4s, which is fantastic because for one, great tires for this weather, and two, I just like having

Michelin. All of my friends back home were employed by them. I actually could not show my face back home if uh, we put something else on it, and they look so good. We've also got a tire pressure monitoring system, so these little remote things, they screw into the valve stem.

here and then that will communicate back to our engine computer and to our dash so we'll be able to see if our tire pressure goes up or down we can set alarms and also log it if you're racing you could see your tire pressures as you go in the

track so we just unscrew this we install these on each tire and we put them on the car and the bronze it's going to look sick it's going to look so good all right we are 4 minutes until our wheel alignment we still haven't started

it but we're going to get it in the air push it out the door turn the key and cross our fingers that it [Music] works it's alive sounds good kind of first drive let's go get a wheel alignment where we go works it the alignment's not great the

scrubbing you can hear is the wheels like fighting each other but we're going to go straight to the alignment shop get that sorted out and then hit the dyno the radiator is like stone cold at the top but there's a lot of heat in the

This Car Tech Upgrade Went WAY Too Far - feat. Mighty Car Mods

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Linus Tech Tips

Project Overview: Modernizing a Honda Civic

Previous upgrades included Android Auto, power windows, and a new paint job.

The engine had overheating, oil leaks, and other issues.

Planned upgrades include new wiring looms, dash, H-Tech, and SPS.

A new DSP will modernize the audio system.

The original engine and transmission will be removed.

Other components like exhaust, suspension, and brakes will also be replaced.

The car will be converted to a manual transmission.

A K24 engine (from a TSX Type S or Odyssey) will replace the original 1.7L engine.

Suspension, brakes, calipers, and driveshafts will be replaced.

Fully adjustable suspension will be installed.

New suspension arms and brakes will be installed.

Discussion of parts whose value exceeds the car's value.

Aluminum valve covers, headers, and a custom wiring harness are highlighted.

A pre-made wiring harness saves time and effort.

Amplifiers are located in the rear, requiring power wiring.

RCA cables are used for audio signal transmission.

A miniDSP 8x12 DL is used for room correction and audio processing.

The K24 engine arrives and is installed using custom mounts.

An electronic throttle body is installed.

A keypad for cruise control and DSP is added.

The hood needs to be modified to accommodate the larger engine.