There are three certainities in life, Death, Tax and my office mates can’t sing for shit.A couple of weeks ago they were trying to sing Pretty women and if there wasn’t a chorus with the same words we wouldn’t still know what song they were attempting!

That aside one thing I have learnt is, buying a new performance ride in Sri Lanka is a non starter. Unless of course you or your daddy have a lot of “mullah” than you know what to do with.

So did work on a project and with the help of Dinesh Jay and Sajad from Auto force fame and of course the Zee man from I-chips campus (with apologies to KLM), to convert a standard automatic Honda civic hatch (EXI) into an awesome B16A beast.

The EXI’s come with just over a 100horses and that aint any fun at all. So the plan was to dump a B16A, the legendary Honda Doc engine into the hatch, along with the ECU (computer box), geer box and wire harness. The breaks were to be upgraded as well to all around disks. 15″ sniper alloys completed the look

After two weeks at the Auto force HQ’s down Karanasara road and a few testing runs the car was ready, well not quiet. Ready here is defined as engines running no “miss” or ECU call outs. I took the car out that Sat night and boy what a difference it was. Vroooooom
Instead of 7000 RPM cut off I had 9000 and the V-Tec, what a racket that created..

You had to hear it to believe it, the V-Tec came on at 6000 (set late) with such power and noise it was like having turbo or something. A few spins around Colombo and letting my fellow members at HQ drive the verdict was satisfactory. Stone cold killer loved it and papa Z thought it was too much power on my hands.

It was purrfect, not quite..coming down baseline I saw the color lights change to amber and thought I will break late (no one was on my tail)..hell –the rear wheels locked and the car swerved and stopped..phew –that was close to the railing. Off it went to auto force HQ’s and the boys there did a good job fixin the breaks. The fault was in the break pump and it was fixed in no time. The SIR’s were being sold at aprx Rs 1.5 million den and I had mine one for 300k less,

The SIR was a whole lot of fun and the time and money spent was well worth it..The mugen kit it certainly made it look good….

Sadly work was getting in the way and I could not maintain the SIR anymore and had to part with it. It’s been re-done now by the new owner and it’s much much more faster, neater and uh cleaner. Will try and add some pics of the hot hatch.

Bottomline – It was worth swapping a performance engine before the duty change, its
FULLY worth now as the prices for these cars have just shot thru the roof. Afterall
If you needed the new Civic now you have to pocket a cool 5 mil. See what I mean..

The key is to find a reliable and trust worthy source for the conversion.

My friend “NG” lets refer to him as that, has confirmed cost to convert a lancer into
a kick ass EVO3 with racing breaks/ Recaro seats and the works. Anyone interested?

**Just in case your ignorant about cars, I am not calling this vehicle SIR out of respect for the car or some bull shit like that. That’s the badge Honda ships the B16A engines under. The U.S market equivalent is “Civic SI”