I've been racing scca for a couple years now in my 97 cobra and it's easily a top 5 car with me on some good rubber but i recently bought a 02 si with a k20a2 motorswap in it. it has skunk2 proseries c coilovers and that's it suspension wise it has the rsx-s 6 speed tranny and i've heard that's it's not a lsd so i'm going from a much faster rwd built suspension car to a roughly 190whp fwd with coilovers. I'm going racing on the 13th now this car handles very nicely already and I can fly through some corners without gas or brake but in order to be faster i need to understand the fwd basics so I can push harder.


With my cobra I would dive deep (deeper then this si can handle) let off brakes and slowly roll into the throttle maybe slightly oversteering with the si i can't dive as deep and I can't get the freakin *** end to rotate for anything and i'm understeering. I've heard that with fwd you brake earlier and gas through the corner to have the tires pull you out but I wanted some more input from more people so does anybody have any ideas to help me or any mods I should do to help stiffen this thing up alittle more I'm just a rwd guy and can build a fast car but i'm trying to understand fwd to build this car correctly?

 

spring rates?, bars or no bars?, alignment numbers?, We need a little more info and we will get you rotating. That particular chassis is not the best but it can be done.

 

the previous owner said 12kg all the way around??? i'm guessing 12,000 spring rate i'll have to do more research I just bought the car last week I know trial and error will be my best tool i'm just looking for basics of it.

It has a factory front and rear sway bar i'm not sure of what to align it to so i did an alignment yesterday and just put the toe to factory specs all the way around and i believe it only has neg .5 camber in the front and 1.5 in the rear (before I go I will realign to a more aggressive setting but right now i have to research a starting place with the specs since this is a daily drivin car I don't want to destroy the insides of my tires........My cobra has 1.5 neg camber in the front with 1/16 in toe in solid axle in rear when my tires are done it's usually 2/32 on the inside tread and 3/32 on the outside to give an example I could do up to 3 degrees but i don't wanna kill tires

 

12K is 670lbs. I would try 700-1000 in front. You need way more camber. Very very good front brakes should help you eat up the cobra in the braking, Lots and lots of camber and caster in front and 1500-2000lb rear springs.

 

i'm gonna need way more brakes to beat the cobra it has 2 piece slotted 13in rotors stainless steal lines upgraded calipers hawk hps pads and vented rears with all the same 11in rotors..................how much neg camber on these cars before they start wearing the inside of the tires? I know they can handle more then cobra but i was thinking just going 2 degrees all the way around of course maxing caster and i think for fwd you want alittle toe out am i correct....what about a sway bar i don't have much body roll when i max the coilovers but that thing is so small should i get a bigger one in the front or rear?

 

It doesnt take much to get the civic to out brake or equal what you are used to in the cobra...
Including the 11 inch rotors.
Lots of options, and they all dont have to start with a stop-tech or willwood parts.

 

Get some real good pads on the stock calipers to try first like Hawk DTC 60 or 70 up front and hawk black in the rear, unless you have money for calipers then get some Brembos from a Japanese RSX Type R or some wilwood 6 pistons and the like. Try running a stiff as rear spring rate as you can tolerate, the suspension design on the 02 Si is poor and needs little travel as possible to work right. For the front camber you need to get like 4 degrees and as much caster as you can get. Try locating some good aftermarket top hats for the struts that allow for this. You will need to sacrifice some tire wear to get the car to work right, its just the nature of the cars suspension design.

 

ok i'll start there. Thank you I guess I can go alittle farther with the camber I'm a tech at a honda dealership (that's why I got the si something different plus I get razzed all the time for having a domestic at a import shop lol) so I can align it on saturday race sunday and align it back on monday...i'm looking at the whole car build right now and will slowly piece it together first things i'm doing are full exhaust RCC manifold and kpro then brakes then more suspension then cams my goal is to have a 250whp all motor si that i can daily drive and autocross on weekend then if the rare track day pops up 250whp should put me atleast running a low 13 high 12 which is just shy of the cobras power so i think i'd be happy thanks again for the advice........as far as driving should i try to whip the *** end around with the wheel or just brake hard and (quick tap) while cornering to see if it comes loose?

 

I changed over from a ESP spec'ed '96 cobra to a EP3 around two years ago...

670lb spring rates all around is going to understeer quite alot. He either ordered custom spring rates, or mismatched a coilover set. OEM is 248f/440r.

Something along the lines of 560f/890r should work well. It might seem odd for the rear to have such a high rate, but the rear motion ratios are something along the lines of 0.58; to the front's 0.91.

Upgrading the rear sway bar to something more substantial (e.g. http://www.jhpusa.com/store/pc/viewP...8&idcategory=0 ) really helped with the car's balance; as did front camber bolts. I run -2degf, -1.5deg rear, with a slight toe-in for the rear.

EP3's are severely under-braked in stock form. Tiny rotors (10.3"F/10.2"R for a 2,800lb car) and poor airflow results in really high rotor/pad temps. If you have an inferred thermometer, check out the front rotor temps after a drive.
I run hawk HP+ pads, and will soon upgrade to carbotech xp10's for the front and xp8's for the rear.

Don't lower the car too much (anything over 1.5" lower than stock), etc... some good info in here:
https://honda-tech.com/forums/acura-rsx-dc5-honda-civic-ep3-32/ep3-dc5-suspension-tuning-basics-faqs-told-mustclime-2639666/

 

Braking has less to do with rotor size and pads than it does simple physics. If your Civic weighs what most do, it'll likely out-brake the Cobra. Camber is tricky, hard to say either way. Depends on tire and other alignment settings including (and especially) ride height. Front wheel drive cars often times have LESS camber than RWD cars do because they need to use their rear tires to have limited traction entering the corner, maximum braking on all four wheels, and their front tires to be powering out of the corner sufficiently. All of these things usually aim to less camber than you might think. The other thing is that you shouldn't base your camber setting on wear, it should be temperature spread and driving feel. Toe on FWD cars is also in the air, but you can often do "odd" things like rear toe out to help turn-in. Sway bars are separate of spring rate you're achieving with coilovers. Body roll is all relative. Without serious simulation, there is little way to decide what the sway bars should be without experimentation.

Driving-wise, the cars are similar. Both have four tires and a steering wheel. A pedal to stop and a pedal to go. Don't over-think anything. The FWD platform will STRUGGLE on power-down, not be "pulling" itself through corners. The front tires are being asked to corner and accelerate at the same time, plus the weight is moving away from them, the opposite of the RWD platform. Just go out and try to minimize lap time the same way as the Cobra, just don't over-drive the car. Brake deep, keep the brake lights on to the apex, and be easy on that right foot on corner exit. A later apex might be necessary if you're used to being able to rotate the car at the apex on power, you're going to be probably getting frustrated with the FWD platform.

How's the LSD in that car?

 

I just checked if you buy the pro series c coil over set from skunk2 they come with 12kg spring rates all the way around so i'm going to have to change them and I think that next time i'm slow at work i'm going to adjust the height and alignmet to try to get it set right He just slammed it but I know your suppost to have the lca parallel to the ground I won't be able to get the spring rates right before the autox on the 13th so I need to do what I can but untill my cobra sells i can't do anything

 

it's a rsx-s 6 speed tranny out of a 03 i'm not 100% on all the mixing and match of parts and cars so i'm not sure what diff it has in it but I've heard it doesn't have a lsd I was told I should get a 06^ si tranny which came with a lsd and just have a spare tranny

 

if u want the rear end to come out dive into the turn as fast as u can and lift... once u lift weight will transfer to the front wheels and the rear will come out... up grade the rear sway bar... leave the front one stock... more weight u transfer onto the front the better u turn while turning.. makes any sense?

 

02 civic si ep3? i had one of those... truly didn't like it ... stick with double wishbone suspension hondas.. 89-2000

 

Yeah, don't do any of that. You know what moves weight to the front? Braking. How do you "dive into the corner"? I might just be grumpy after 18 hours of driving to wind up in Wyoming, but it sounds like you've never seen a track before.

I'll assume since he's said he's fairly fast in the Ford that he knows quite a bit about moving weight forward. What you're saying is true, the means to do it is kinda skewed. Here's how a turn works: Slap the brake pedal (moving weight forward quickly) and slow as much as you can in a straight line, at the turn-in point blend off the brake as you smoothly turn in, at the apex you should be off the brake and moving your foot to the gas pedal, open your hands and roll on the throttle in the opposite manner you rolled out of the brake, try to get to full throttle as soon as possible and brake as late as possible. If you do this perfectly for multiple laps and the car won't rotate by the apex, then fix the car. The amount of nose weight on turn-in usually has more to do with how much you're trail braking than "diving in".

The rear sway bar affects the turn-in by adjusting how much load is borrowed from the inside rear to be placed on the outside front. Most of the time this helps rotation and is one of the easiest ways to adjust balance of a car. Not often the ideal way, but it's sometimes a quick easy fix to get rid of a push. Sometimes though, you can overload the front tire with too much diagonal weight transfer. This is often the case as well by going too soft on the front bar, allowing too much roll over the front axle. Stock bars are usually VERY soft. They can be great SOMETIMES but often are just too flexible to be all that much good. Test and tune, dude. Try the stock bar, look for the signs of too much roll or overloading of one tire or another, and fix if necessary and if budget allows.