After dealing with my BC RSDs height issue for some time, namely that the height of the front shock assembly was limited by the pillowball/tophat bit, I sought another solution (suggested by somebody else somewhere months ago). My RSDs are relatively new, shipped to me in Feb of '05, and apparently the older models don't have this problem, and the models without the pillowball mount wouldn't have this problem either. This pic show the difference in height between the pillowball unit and a stock Civic/Integra tophat:




That's clearly a sizeable difference. The biggest problem I was having wasn't just with the height of the car, but with the fact that in order to achieve that height, I had to compress the spring as much as possible (note: not fully compressed, but as compressed as I could get it with the spanner wrenches) just to have the lower sleeve where I needed it. I didn't like that, hence all this trouble. The pics of the actual shocks side-by-side will be up in a bit, the ones I took turned out wonky. Needless to say, it worked very well. I can't say anything about driving feel, as my car is still out of action, but that'll be up within a week or two.

 

Subscribing as I should be getting mine soon.

 

that picture maybe alittle missleding, you should have placed both areas were the top mount sits on the car at the same height, then most people would have a better idea.

 

Yeah, unfortunately I didn't think to take pics until I was already well into it, and I wasn't about to put everything back together as it was just to get a picture. For a general idea of ride height difference, the car is currently semi-slammed, and that's with the shock assembly 0.5" shorter than it was before (still has a bit of room to go lower). This is the car as it was prior to the change:

That was as low as it could possibly go in the front. Now I have less than a finger-width between the top of the tire and the fender lip, with definite rubbing.

 

So what exactly did you do to acheive the extra lowering capability??

Did you use the stock top mount or modify the Buddy Club one??

Can that spherical top hat below the pillowball mount not be removed at all??

Let me know what you did to fix the situation as I should be getting mine soon and although I don't want my car slammed I for sure don't want it to sit as high as the pic you posted of your hatch.

Right now I have the ground control top hats that extend shock travel I suppose I could use those instead of stock or Buddy Club right?

Thanks

 

I replaced the entire BC tophat unit with the entire Civic tophat unit. The top half of the BC unit would probably work, and I may wind up changing to that in the future, but I knew the Civic one would work without issues. Using that tophat allows the spring to sit a bit higher on the shock and have no or a small amount of preload, and consequently the lower spring perches are higher on the shock body as well, leaving room for the lower sleeve to be adjusted.

Previously, the lower sleeve was bottomed out on the bottom of the shock body, and even for that, the spring had a huge amount of preload just to give space for the lower sleeve to be that high. I'll try to get a pic of the car as it sits now for a better visual comparison.

 

So I guess you can remove the sperical top hat from the pillow ball upper mount? It is possible to do it??

If it is then that would be my solution. If you look at the difference between the older BC RSD's and the newer ones the only real difference is that the top of the spring sits at the bottom of the sperical top hats in the new ones and in the old ones the top of the spring sits at the bottom of the pillow ball upper mount.

zygspeed had a post where he had pictures of the old ones and new ones side by side.

All in all thanks for the info, great write up on what to do in that situation.

 

I'll have to take better pics of the BC parts that are there. It very well could be that there's just the bottom pillowball portion that's different.

 

i have BC RSD im guessing the older version, because my pillow ball mount doesnt not have that extra bottom piece to hold the spring

my spring sits up to the plate giving me an extra 1- 1 1/2 inches

 

that washer is what is pressing the pillowball ends in place