problems with 90 civic

I have posted some about this car before. My dad got screwed when he bought it the car smokes like crazy.. it gets worse as it warms up then very slowly starts to taper off. the guy aparently put crx cams in it and an AEM true time cam gear. its adjusted at 5 ahead. when you start the car it smokes a little and the rpms shoot way up to about 3800 it didnt do this before but now it does. then the rpms climb to around 4k and the smoke gets worse. the cam shaft and rocker arms and everything under the valve cover look good. i tried to compression test it but my damn compression tester was a piece of crap. i hooked it up to an air compressor later and it still didnt read anything. there was enough pressure to blow my hand off the hose though.

what I am looking for is some advice.. is it better to rebuild, replace or swap an engine and to do these how much money are we looking at? the car also looks like it has those cheap ebay coilovers on it. should that be taken off or just leave them till they break. the car has an SI manual tranny swapped into it as well. before it started idling real high it ran fine just smoked like crazy.

what motors are direct bolt in replacements? how much and where can you find them?

what else can we do with it?

Well the CRX and Civic cams are the same. What are you going for? Do you want performance, good gas mileage, just a good running motor? What motor is in the car already?

You can rebuild a motor for like $200 (if you do the work yourself)

its the 1.5 motor .. thats the d15b right? its for my dad. he originally bought for his daily driver to save his mint 91 prelude si from the miles. so mostly just a good running motor but also looking into other possibilities.

I would say just rebuild it. Get a rebuild kit and go to work.

rebuilding it is gonna cost more in time and labor and be much harder.

I say just get a new low mileage motor and swap it in, takes only a few hours and he'll be on the road again.

It Sound Like That Your Valve Stem Seals Are Leaking Oil Into The Combustion Chamber. There Are Some Cases That I Heard That The Clylinder Wall Deform Causing Oil To Get Into The Chamber, Happen When Motor Overheat Extremly

If You Can Afford It Just Drop A Jdm Dohc Zc Motor In It Cost About $800, Bolts Right In, You'll Be Very Happy With The Perfromance

Swap it! Swap it!

Believe me, youll be much happier... Even if u just swap in a D16A6 (from a Civic/CRX Si)... Decent gas mileage, and decent amount of power... Plus the room to grow since u can do so many things to those engines... If you can afford alittle more, then def a DOHC ZC... I dont even think they are $800 anymore... Could probably find a decent one for about $500-$600...

I tend to agree on the valve stem seals, but I would go to advanced or autozone and pick up a 15 dollar compression tester. Mine has always worked well.

For the idle, make sure the throttle cable isn't adjusted too tight. That will cause a lot of Idle problems. There is also the Idle ajustment screw, but if its that high I'd really lay money on the throttle being partly open.

As for a swap, you can pick up d series engines for pretty cheap, I got a nice d16a vtec for 700 shipped off ebay, it was in great condition. Or else you can find all kinds of d series engines that folks have swapped out for real cheap if you look around.

I don't understand why every always says don't rebuild a d series. You can find them everywhere. Ok, but most of the time you don't know the condition of the motor. I have rebuilt a D series for about $200 before. Find me a good running low mileage D series for $200.

D series motors are very nice and have very good part support. I didn't know shit about my engine so when it blew up I replaced the whole thing but was smart enough to have every single bolt on and cam transferred from the blown up engine to the newer low mileage engine. Since then, I've gotten a better clutch, flywheel and new si tranny. I probably could have just have gotten a b swap for the money spent but I would've probably been in the same boat after awhile. Think about it. Is it really wise to just swap in a motor even with a new timing belt and water pump it'll last awhile but I've heard all sorts of stories of broken sensors and other parts that keep you emptying your pockets and scratching your head figuring out which model integra will have the same part to use. After awhile, people get to know it all. But if you're like most you just want it fixed and driveable.