legacycentral bbs

Sooo both of my motors are toast and in looking for a replacement. Ej22 are hard to find around me so I'm thinking of swapping a jdm ej20 sohc N/a. I was wonderjng if anyone has had any experience with the swap? From the pictures it looks like maybe swap my intake manifold and maybe exhaust but just curious if there is a set back because of going 2.0 instead of 2.2. Thanks guys

There's the old phase 1 ej20s and phase 2 ej20s. The phase 1 version is what you want. It is identified by having raised lines and 16 Valve written on the valve covers. The phase 2 motors have smooth valve covers.

Most likely you'll have to swap intake manifolds, possibly the cam and crank sensors too. Only if they have different plugs. Your ecu will run that motor fine.

If the new motor has single port exhaust on each head, you'll need to find a matching exhaust manifold, but that will bolt up to the rest of your exhaust.

Thanks for the reply. It's really hard finding a the phase one ej20. Could I get away with running the phase 2 if I block off that egr port that goes to the head?

Nope, electrically it is incompatible, and short of machining custom parts to physically adapt your phase 1 ej22's iac, throttle body and etc, as well as building resistor patch harnesses for the injectors it won't work.

Hmmm. Just throwing a hail Mary but what if I were to put the phase 1 intake manifold on instead of using the phase 2 manifold? Will it not work because one is direct injection and one isn't?

That would solve most of the issues other than the timing crank and cam sprockets being wrong. Someone in the UK (Carl Davey?) Created conversion spacers. However... The intake manifold has to be cut in half and widened!

Better bet is to swap in any EJ shortblock between your 2 best heads. As long as you swap over your crank sprocket and crank position sensor, it would work. If you put a 2.5 shortblock in, you will probably need to run premium, or at least plus. If you put a turbo shortblock in, you will have lower compression and the car will be even slower than it was.

I did an EJ20 swap years ago into a 93 Legacy, not sure about what phase it was, but what I found you needed was the correct exhaust ports. Intake manifold and other external parts that were not the same were transplanted from the original EJ22.