How To Tell????
 

how can u tell the year of a j-spec engine 13bt??? simply by looking at it, going to buy one but i want a year 90 or above but how do i tell????

You can't tell 90 or above, you can tell 89+, it will have the plastic thermostat housing, electronic oil metering pump, 2 plunger TPS, etc etc... All the things you would find on any S5 TII engine. To make sure the block is an S5 just look for the knock sensor above the T1 spark plug hole.

You can only tell if the peripherals are j-spec, the shortblock is identical to US-spec. The brake booster line will be on the outside of the LIM, there will be no AWS on the UIM, the engine harness will be exiting the driver's side of the engine and be hacked off

so there is no way to tell the year of the engine im buying??? damn that suks

Well BlueTII told you how to tell if it's an S5 (89-92) or not. I would say that would be sufficient. There is nothing different about 89's than 90's as far as I know so unless you are looking for a 16 year old or less motor. I would assume that any S5 motor would work. Another quick looker, although anybody could put one on, is to look at the intercooler and it should read "Rotary Turbo with Intercooler" if it's a jspec.