Picked up a 91 civic wagon a little over a month ago. it's got a d16a6 that runs strong, but has over 212,000 miles on it.
From browsing through the posts here it seems like it may have potential as a rebuild instead of swapping out. At first I thought I would do a b series swap, but my wagon is a awd model. b series swaps are a lot of fab work etc.

So here's my question.... other than the rods, what are the weak spots on the d series engines. It runs good now. If I start tearing the motor apart should I expect a worn, out of spec crank, or any other problems of the sorts. Or are the honda d series motors pretty reliable as far as doing a teardown, new bearings, and reassembly.

I'm new to honda. I'm just not sure which parts are "consumable" as far as the engine goes. I'm thinking about replacing bearings, better rods, mini me head setup, and possibly a small (low psi.) turbo in the future.

The reason a swap is a consideration is because during engine rebuild... if I find any problems, the car is still running and driving while I'm working the problems out.

the pistons and rods are the weak link in the D series motors...you can run up to around 225hp on a turbo setup on stock internals...

I guess I should rephrase a small part of my question now that I think of it.
What parts should I expect need replacement when I tear down my current engine. ie. pistons, crank, etc.

well if tear it down, the only thing that you should have to replace is the bearings in the block and the piston rings for the most part...if your going to turbo it and have everything apart, go get some integra LS rods and vitara (sp) pistons

like it was said before the pistons and rods are weak links of the d series engine, vitara's and eagles are the best bang for the buck and i'v seen vitara builds make 500whp before i loved my vitara build in my hatch i shouldnt have sold it. Just a question what all do you have to do to run ls rods in a D series block and crank?

The LS rods are a tad too wide on both ends of the rod. The big end needs to be milled down to the same width as a D16 rod, approx. 0.040". All B series rods have a 21 mm wrist pin, yet the D series uses a 19 mm wrist pin, with the D17 and the PDN GX pistons being exceptions, the small end of the LS rod needs be bushed in order to use the smaller diameter 19 mm wrist pins. It can be a very strong and economical upgrade if you have access to machine work for very very cheap or for free. Otherwise, it is hard to beat the price of h beam rods offered by Tuner Toys, FJ Distributors, and Eagle Specialty Products.

There are several making over 250 whp with dseries motors stock rods. with a excellent tune I dont see a problem, a bad tune will lead to rod failure, great thing about dseries rods is they bend, only broken dseries rod Ive ever seen that broke was cause the moron never kept up with the maintenance like oil.