The smart-ass part of me would tell you that it’s a 4 cylinder gas engine. The helpful part of me would tell you…
I’m presuming that you need to know the displacement. There’s three sure-fire ways I can think of to figure that out. The easiest method is to look at the catalyst sticker under the hood. There should be a line that says Engine Family or something along those lines, along with a string of numbers and letters. Somewhere about the middle of that there should be a 1.5 or 1.6, followed by more letters. That’s your engine displacement.
Another method is to look at the timing cover. There should be a sticker on there that says something to the effect of D15A1 or something along those lines, that’s your engine size and some sort of options, I’m not exactly sure that the entire code means. The D part means it’s a single overhead cam, the 15 means it’s a 1.5L. I forget what the rest means.
Methos 3 is to look on the front of the engine block (front in this case meaning the side closest to the front of the car), just to the left (if you’re facing the car) of the exhaust manifold. There should be a flat spot on the block with the engine code stamped onto it. Since it’s a 1998, this stamping is probably covered in scuzz, so you may need to clean that off before you can read it. Just out of curiosity, why do you need to know what type of engine is in your car?