OK, quite simple, it had become time to do something about the worn out suspension on my 89 Civic Si Hatchback. So of course I wanted to buy something a little more special than the stock parts. I knew that I needed Trailing Arm Bushings desperately! Not to mention all the tires need aligned, so I figured I would go ahead and do a few mods before I paid to have the wheels aligned. I bought the following:

-Skunk2 Lowering Springs ($120 ebay)
-Tokico HP Struts ($220 ebay)
-Skunk2 Rear Camber Kit ($175 from Skunk2)
-Energy Suspension Trailing Arm Bushings, and also Rear Control Arm Bushings ($60 from ES Parts)
-Beck/Arnley Front Camber Kit ($100 with my employee discount at Advance Auto Parts)





And of course, a picture of my excited face while I am being tag teamed by Skunk2 and Tokico's great products:



The installation took about 6 hours, not including hardware store trips, I truly do appreciate Honda simple design concepts, if bolts didn't break off from being old that would make working on them absolutely trouble free (if you have small hands like I do) Pressing out the old Control Arm Bushings was kinda scary though.

Here are before pictures of the car:




And here are the after pictures:





The car now drives like a damn go kart......ha, and I couldn't be happier. The response to the road is instant, and the tires stay on the ground. Handling has definately been increased a lot. If you don't like a bumpy ride, then you probably don't want to do this. It rides smoothly in a performance aspect, but is definately not smooth in ride comfort, I love it.

 

just do me one favor?? please ditch that exhaust.

 

and the lights LOL

 

looks good, i really like the stance on that, could you get the part number for the beck arnly front camber ajusters? I work at NAPA and would ge a discount too.

 

Do you have any pictures durring the install? What tools did you need?

 

Positives:

- EF
- Minimal rust
- Nice wheels
- probably original paint
- nice drop (it'll settle after 2 weeks, and lower more than now)


Negatives:

- a lil rust
- Paint the moldings black with Duplicolor bumper paint
- Ditch the exhaust + tail lights

 

looks nice

 

where does it say your tokico blues were made? china or japan?

i hope those blues work out for you, but i think you should have spent the difference to get illuminas.

 

haha... i was going to ask the same question.

 

looks good

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tyson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">where does it say your tokico blues were made? china or japan?</TD></TR></TABLE>does it make a difference? are there some imitation tokico's running around?

 

well from what i understand, tokico farmed out the production of their blues to another plant in china.

and there seems to be a lot of complaints about the quality of them recently.

i think theres a connection.

im jsut trying to confirm if all of the blues are now made in china.

 

nice job on the DIY suspension setup

drop looks good

rims look good, good color for your car

 

btw, you might want to take a look at this in regards to your skunk2 rear upper control arms.

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1433948




honestly, you shouldnt have wasted your money on the camber kits front and back, and should have spent the money on better shocks.

 

on the tokico blues . they actually felt worse than my stocks on my DA.
i hope yours work out for you.
i rarely complain about anything,but man those blues were horrible.
good luck .

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tyson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">honestly, you shouldnt have wasted your money on the camber kits front and back, and should have spent the money on better shocks.</TD></TR></TABLE>

ya really see this is the only real time you should have to worry bout camber kits




i have illuminas with tenzo coil overs this is with an inch left to drop which i have now put them all the way down and it handles.

 

yes, I cannot stand this exhaust, it sounds terrible, I have nothing nice to say about, sadly, I don't even know what it is

 

you're probably going to need a press to do this yourself, unless you can actually get the old bolts on the rear struts to come out. they are a wedge bolt, and I had to cut them in half and press them out. I only used a 12, 14, 17, and 19mm to do this whole thing, I have an air rachet which helps to make things go faster. you need a spring compressor. pry bar, uhhh that's all I can think of, pretty novice job

 

I must apologize for the lights, they are a result of careless "back up" procedure, I baked into a pick up and busted out my beautiful stock tail lights I didn't know where I could buy stock ones for a good price, at the time, I didn't know of some of the places I do now, so the lights are going to be put off for a while, this exhaust needs to get taken care of, also the rust and a few small dents

 

no install pix, didn't want to get my camera dirty, I installed alone, so no one else could take pix either

 

thanks a lot for informing me about the camber kit, my kit was also missing one of the locking nuts, which pissed me off, but thankfully it was the regular thread side and I was able to buy a nicer hardened steel nut for it, I tried calling them, but I got their machine, and no one called back, I am sad now

 

I just bought some Tokico blues as well...hopefully they're not garbage. I just needed something to fix my crappy *** struts.

Anyway how did you do the bushings without a press? I was under the impression that those bushings absolutely needed to be pressed out and the new ones pressed in.

I'm getting ready to do almost the exact same thing to my car so some more detail on how you completed the procedure would be very helpful to me.

 

Man, I want some Tokiko gas shocks. I hate that squeaking sound in the rear shocks.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by jedubz &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Do you have any pictures durring the install? What tools did you need?</TD></TR></TABLE>

good write up--
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1106020

 

Ditch the rims, exhaust and ricetezzas. Or i would if the car were mine. Otherwise nice DIY!