Has anybody ever installed a 1G engine on a 2G?

Jason Neal had this done with his car, buying a 1990 engine to put into his 1997 FWD. Details on how he did it can be read here.

Changing the 2G cylinder head for the 1G version has also been done. Road Race Engineering has done this swap to a few cars. Besides checking out their web site article, read Mike's archive post on the subject, and his subsequent follow-up post. Josh Rivel also successfully did this swap, although it took a lot of tuning to get the engine operating correctly. Also, Todd Hayashi posted a list of potential gotchas while doing this conversion, and Nathan Crisman described a changeover kit he once had for sale here. Unfortunately, he never had a chance to use it.

Finally, there is an excellent photo gallery walk-though of installing a 1G head onto a 2G here, courtesy of Shawn Gradek. The photography on this site is worth any download time you may encounter.

Those who are seriously interested in this type of changeover must read the archives on the subject to obtain the latest information.