victor.ek4

Hi again HT


I'm looking for inputs for a good initial suspension setup for my EK4 civic. Before you guys say go out and test it I have to say that I live in Brazil and it's not easy to have access to a track, and it's ever harder to have access to expensive parts as we have to pay over 100% on taxes to get them.

I also have absolute no reference as there are no road racing Hondas down here exept for some basic spring+shock setups.


What I have right now is:

Full hardrace bushings + camber and toe kits
Tokiko Illumina shocks
8kg/mm front coilovers / 6kg/mm rears
26mm front sway bar/ 19mm RSB

With that basic suspension I fought a massive understeer on the last event at Interlagos, running 185 slick tires as it's the only full slick tire available, but I am considering switching wider R888's.


Considering that I ordered a 24mm RSB + Subframe reinforcement to try to avoid that situation but as the car is laying on jack stands I's like to know if there is something else I could do to give more balance to it.

The car is very light but the front end is a bit heavy as it's boosted + accusump + oil cooler, etc

It should run at about 280whp range and I have a close ratio transmission with a 1.5way LSD

What would you guys suggest as far as spring rates, remove or not the front sway bar, alignment settings, etc?


Just a lil pick of back in the time it was still all motor B-series

lwnslw

Just because you are in brazil and you get to run at interlagos you lucky dawg . Anyway to me all you just said is wrong , sorry to tell you in my own opinion , so I'm going to give you a basic setup based on my own ek .
Now you are running way too much Powa for those tires . Try at least 225 on 15 " wheels and still will have problems.
Anyway here we go and again this is based on my set up and it is a baseline for you.
16 k springs front 18 k rear no sway front 22 mm rear. 1/16 toe out front 1/16 to 1/8 rear and also I would try to get some adjustable shocks . I know illumina have some adjustment I doubt they are valved for heavier springs.
I'm running 17" wheels with 235/40/17 tires , it helps .
Again before the hate mail starts coming in this is my basic setup and I can kick some *** with it. Also use a front splitter and a mild wing to keep in in check.

lwnslw

Try some camber like 3 or more degrees front and back. And I'm not a guru.

victor.ek4

Interlagos is such an amazing track, but it's getting harder and harder to attend trackdays there, besides, it can get as expensive as $500 for a 3hour track time.

I understand I need to run higher rates but for now I don't have the money to buy decent shocks so the best I can do is run a 10/12 setup but that would be a little hard on the Tokikos.

But anyways, do you have any brand reccomendation for the shocks?

As far as tires, yes, I know that was a big fail but at the time they were the only slick available... Now they came up with two new categories so we can get new sizes:

235/55R16 from the Linea CUP
215/45R17 from the Mini Cooper's

How do you manage to fit the 235's? You run this size on the rear too?

The front splitter is in my plans as well as a big rear wing, and a rear diffuser, but I need to tune the suspension first.

I'm also considering a brake upgrade but that will be on hold for longer.



Thank you so much for your input, it's very important to me to have information from people who actually race their cars. Down here, poly bushigs, eibach springs and blown shocks seem to be the ultimate setup

victor.ek4

Also, would you think removing the front sway bar with such low spring rates could work?

lwnslw

235 /40/17 fit well on 7" wheels. I belive the wheel offset is 41. And I have a 1/4 inch spacer in the back and a half in the front although the front can go without spacer.
For shocks I have TEIN circuit masters valve for the springs but what the guys are using and they like them is the jrz but also koni 2812 are up there. The problem is at $900 a shock they can be pricy.
This would be my list of shocks
Progress suspension shocks with heavier springs
TEIN
Jrz
Kw Motorsport , not the variant
Koni
Omni maybe

lwnslw

For some reason if you get the rear on that chassis to hook you don't need a monster wing . The rear is very stable , you are going to get push before you get loose.

lwnslw

With that low spring rates don't remove the sway bar you will bottom out riding the curves really hard

JW racing

Is this understeer in high speed or low speed Victor?

All that front weight bias is not helping, I would possibly try to get some static weight toward the rear some way. Put a fiberglass hood, then add a 25 lb plate to the spare tire location etc. A airdam and splitter combo will give a bit more front grip too.

225-45-15 R888 will be pretty good, or 235-40-17 will fit, both need to roll the fender lips. It seems you are limited on tire choice though, so go with the widest you can fit.

More rear brake bite will free the back up on entry.

Keep the front sway bar just loosen the end links a little bit.

victor.ek4

It understeers at low speed corners... But it tended to loose the rear all of a suden on a uphill to downhill corner.

But I was using both stock sway bars, now I got the 24mm RSB so we'll see...

The widest 15" R888 available is the 205's and I guess I'll have to get away with them untill I can import some wide 16 inches to fit the 235's.

Yes the front end is really heavy... I'll look for a little ballast on the rear end and corner balance the car

I understand that I have low spring rates and am limited to thin tires, but if I get to balance the car with what I got it would kick serious ***.


Thanks again for your input, this guides me to a better direction.

JW racing

Cool, try the bar and see with fresh tires. The 205 r888 would be fine. Tires are the most important thing so remember they can only give you 100% untill loosing traction - that may be 50% turning, and 50% throttle or 50% braking, which ever adds to 100% but not exceeding 100%. Just make sure your hot air pressures are good, and use a temp gun or pyrometer to see your tire temperatures when you check your hot air pressure, and you will see which tire/tires are doing all the work and which parts of those tires are working the hardest. This will help you tune your setup.

As for the rear sliding or getting light on turns with elevation change, you may experience the car getting light as you are going over the crest of an elevation change. This is natural for the car to do so the driver must be able to adjust and remember that takes place at that moment every lap to negotiate it. See what other people take as far as line goes. Maybe adjust lines or throttle to make the car more stable, driving creativity at it's finest.

Xian

All IMO and what not... The 2812's are pretty top end but so is their price. For a simple track car, I'd go with something like the Koni 8041 "race" shocks. They're essentially revalved SA's that are also shortened. Price is a helluva lot better than some of the higher end stuff that's been suggested and they're plenty good up to around ~1300# springs.

Overall setup, bigger rear bar (you've got coming). I wouldn't mess with the rest of the setup until you get the springs/shocks sorted. My experience is maint with EF's (CRX and Civic) but I'd be looking at something in the 800-900# front and 1000-1200# rear zone. I'd also look to go down on front bar size... Maybe 21-22mm.

Rear aero should be handy... use the springs/bars to get it loose in the slow stuff and a rear wing to try and balance it in the higher speed stuff. No first hand experience with the aero as the series I ran didn't allow it but it seems like a reasonable approach...

Christian

lwnslw

the thing with the ef chassis is that you run different spring rates since your wheel base is different than the ek hatch. By the way 16k and 18K is 896 front and 1080 rear.
I do have the same hatch he does and drives different than a crx. Specially with aero. Sooo different.

victor.ek4

Interesting. I'll see how the car behaves with the 205's, fat rear bar, corner balance and the alignment settings LWNSLW reccomended.

I'll work on aero also, buiding a front splitter is cheap and seems to help alot, along with a rear diffuser. I'll try to build an adjustable rear wing using some sheet aluminum I have laying around.

JW, I do monitor tire pressures and temperatures and I did notice the front tires were overheating alot due to the understeering.

I may also try a thinner front sway bar.

As far as traction I'll just keep the boost down 1-2-3 and crank it up on high gears to catch um on the straights




Xian, are you sure 8041's can handle 1300lbs springs?!

Can I get good shocks + springs for around $1500?




Again, thank you guys, I HAVE NO REFFERENCE, other than books and internet, there is little to none suspension develompent here.. Most people run with stock shocks rebuilt with power steering fluid, cut springs and call that a race setup. Seriously.

Xian

Yeah... I know they drive differently. That's why I mentioned where my experience was predominantly. Also, the setup I suggested is different than my CRX *and* different than my Civic. FWIW, my CRX was 500/700, no front bar, 24mm rear. The Civic was 700/1000, no front bar, 32mm hollow rear bar.

My suggestions above was based on my experience in shorter wheelbase IT cars coupled with setup info on what the fast Integra's were running.

As far as shocks, I ran 1000# rates without an issue and I've known Integra drivers running 1200-1300 on them but they are (admittedly) at the top end of their rebound limits at that point. The 2812's really are a ****-ton better and are DA but they're also Texa$ dollars. For a track car, I wouldn't spend the coin on them.

Remember that a front splitter will increase front grip/aid rotation in the faster stuff and do basically nothing in the slower stuff. With your long WB, I'd set the car up super loose in the low speed stuff and then use rear aero to help stabilize the balance in higher speed stuff.

Just my $0.02 and all that.

Christian

Xian

An afterthought... something that I've toyed around with is using bumpstops as a primary source of spring rate. You can buy then for $20/corner and get them in basically any rate and curve you need. Seems like it would be pretty easy to set the car up to where you get into the bumpstops right off the bat and tune the wheelrate that way. Would likely preclude he need for high dollar dampers (don't have to worry about controlling spring oscillation and high rate springs).

Christian

lwnslw

correct me if I'm wrong and I may need help from somebody else, but, if you use bumpstops you just don't have any suspension under the car. I'm not saying you are wrong cause this is new to me. Using bumpstops to tune your suspension?, isn't that going completely backwards since suspension needs travel to work. How do you tune a bumpstop.
Now to the konis, here where I am the top cars use them, you don't have them better be really good to catch up. It all depends what level you are at or where you want to be.

victor.ek4

What source do you use for bumpstops?

Also, I believe I could go as high as 550~600 lbs on the Ilumina shocks, would that be a big benefit cnsidering I run 450 on the front and 340 on the rear?

I ask that because I have a friend that runs 10/8 on his daily and he would be really happy by swapping them out to my 8/6. Then I could just get another pair of 10~12kg/mm and put it on the car

Xian

I'm going to refrain from being snide on the bumpstop thing, mmmmkay.

Seriously though, they're a huge tool in NASCAR and are used pretty exclusively to tune the car. Bumpstops can be had in damn near any rate you want from slow or fast rising/progressie rate to fairly level rates.

It's a completely different approach to using them than what is typical for road race cars. Essentially we've always used them as a travel limiter. Tuning their rate and specifically *when* they come into play is key. Their rate is additive to your primary rate... so if you have a 400# spring and a bumpstop that goes from 100-500#'s across the first 2" of travel, you end up with 500#'s as soon as the bumpstop comes into play. That rate rises to 900#'s at 2" of shock travel (which would be ~3" wheel travel).

Again, I've never tried running this specifically on a road course car but there's zero reason it wouldn't work. The heavier rate bumpstops I'm using have done a great job balancing out my car (stock ITR with revalved Bilsteins and a 26mm solid rear bar).

Here's a decent primer on the topic: http://www.hrsprings.com/technical/m..._jounce_bumper

And here's some additional setup info: http://www.resuspension.com/techinfo...up%20Guide.pdf

RESuspension also has a ton of parts and rate graphs. I picked up some of their stuff for my stock class autocross car. Fast shipping and all that good stuff.

victor.ek4

I did a little research on this and it sounds very interesting specially for me because I run low spring rates.

As soon as I go back to my hometown and get the time to work on the car I'll measure suspension travel to see what sort of bumpstops should I look for. That might be worth giving a try.

Again, do you know if it would be much of a bennefit upgrading from 8/6kg/mm to 10/8?

That should be as much as the shocks can take

Xian

Yeah, it's a different approach to bumpstops that what I've always used. The only reason I started looking into it is that for stock class autocross, I can't touch the springs. Shocks, bumpstops, and one swaybar are the only things I can change.

I know those rates probably aren't where you want them to be but that's still a 25% and 33% increase in rate (respectively). Only thing I can say is to try them out and see. I wouldn't expect a night and day difference but I'd give them a shot. Also maybe try out swapping them from to rear since you've got a pretty stout front sway bar?

Christian

black jdm type R

i raced my car with 12 front ant 8 rear buddy club coilovers with alot of under with a front swaybar
using tires 235.40.17
now i use -3 camber front and 1/16 out fron 0 rear, same camber rear, to decreese the understeer i made a switch with 16 front and 20 rear,
no front sway bar, a little toe out rear too, have a good balance on the car with the scales and brake early on the curves, hope these helps


here is one vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ze7Z...6&feature=plcp

VTECIntegra9

I used 10/12 rates on my illuminas for a couple years and the biggest problem I had was lack of travel - I had the car somewhat low but even with the higher rates I would bottom out pretty bad. This was partially due to my spring mounting, however I was only working in the last 10% of the shock travel. Just beware of this. Good bump-stops might not be a bad investment to try out but beware you may not have enough room to fit them in the amount of rod left once the suspension is compressed.

That RSB will make a hell of a difference compared to your setup before without the bar... And a new set of tires with that will turn it into a different animal. I agree with the Koni Race's for the track car- I was about to click buy on these but ended up buying some Ohlins from Adam on HT

victor.ek4

I traded my 6k springs to a pair of 10k... So I'll be running 8/10 for now. I've set up my car very high so it wouldn't bottom out.


Meanwhile I still need to find a pair of F22A exhaust valves