A_Rotary_Guy

Well, my girlfriend has a 1997 Civic DX couple with a manual transaxle and I've got a couple of questions. First of all, what would be the reasoning behind switching to a 5 lug setup? I know that most of the time you can get bigger brakes and better rim choices with a 5 lug, but other than that I don't know of anything else.

Nextly, I want to switch to rear disc brake because I'm not a fan of working on drum brakes. What would it take to do this?

And lastly. The car currently has 14" steelies on it which are great for winter tires, but I would like to get something a little nicer for the summer. I was told not to go anything bigger than 16" on a Civic otherwise it'll ride terrible. I know this is true becaues I've got 17's on my Accord and it rides much better with the stock 15's. Also, I'm pretty sure the gas mileage won't suffer from a bigger rim as long as I get alloys because they'll probably be around the same weight as a 14" steel rim. Am I correct in not going anything bigger than a 16" rim?

old man neri

From what I have seen the only reason to go to a 5 lug are; 1) To mount a 5 lug rim 2) To be able to tell your friends you have a 5 lug and it's mad tight JDM or something.


As for rims, just make sure the tire you get is the right size for that car. Then it shouldn't affect gas mileage. Rim weight really has no real bearing on mileage.

As for the brakes, I am sure if you search you will find many write ups on how to do it and what is involved. Is it needed? In my opinion no.

Hope it helps,
-matt

darkclark

there is no reason to to put the 5 lug setup on your girlfriends car, most people that do it because they want to be able to say type-r when the are talking about their car to achive some sort of imaginary jdm cred you can upgrade your brakes more than you will ever need and still stay with 4 lug if you want. there is a plethora of wheel choices on a 4x100 lug pattern so thats not thereason either. the reason you can put 17's on you accord but should not on the civic is because you accord has a taller tire to start with in order to put a 17 on a civic and still have the factory tire height would be to put a rediculasly low tire profile on it like a 35 or 30 and when the tire is that thin it can not do much to absorb the shock of the road and you might crack awheel in apothole or somthing.

A_Rotary_Guy

Yea, I just finally was able to find a few good threads on the 5 lug setup. I understand now why it's so pointless to do the 5 lug conversion. They do make a ton of rims for the 4 lug setup. I also see now that it requires ITR or CTR suspension/brake combos for parts, and that alone is NOT going to be cheap. The only reason it's somewhat cheap to do it on my Accord is because I can use all USDM parts (Oddysee, Legend, Prelude). No reason to be spending over 500 dollars to convert it.

I also realize that if I need the car to brake better all I need to do is upgrade the pads and rotors, but in all honesty, it brakes pretty quickly already since it's such a light car. So now my question is where can I get a rear disc setup and what other parts will I need?

I'll probably end up going with a 16" rim with a little smaller tire if I do change the rims out. You're right though. If you try to put a 17" rim on a Civic you need a very very thin tire and also most of the time you'll have rubbing issues with a rim that big. I'd imagine that if I went 16" I could just use a shorter tire and still be fine. I just need to check how much clearance there is between the stock rim and tire size and see how much room I'd have to work with.

The rim and tire size does have some bearing on gas mileage. When I was running my 17's on my Accord I would average around 28 MPG. After switching to the 15's with the stock tire size I was getting around 32 MPG. I know the 17's slowed the car down some too because I would have to downshift going up hills but with the 15's I can get up the same hills without downshifting.