i noticed a lot of ppl that drop there civics install aftermarket rear control amrs (not sure if they do front also) but is there a reson for it can you not lower your civic on the stock ones or what. or is it just for what they look like under there.

 

Manily it's for the look. Some Civics didn't come with the hole for the sway bar, so they opt to install aftermarket control arms instead of hunting down OEM arms.

 

Colorful anodizing is commonly thought to make a Honda handle better.

But seriously, there is no functional advantage to fancy lower arms, and they usually come at the cost of reliability.

 

the green ones will make your car handle much better then the blue or red ones...

 

The reason? The OEM ones are just plain ugly. Yeah. I said it.

 

lol this

 

Aftermarket lower control arms are lighter than OEM ones. So you go faster!!! VROOM VROOM!

 

Alot of people break bolts off in their OEM arms and just buy aftermarket instead of replacing the bushings in the OEM arms.

 

So if you install aftermarket arms,a subframe base and a rear lower tie bar for looks....Is the rear tie bar the only part of the 3 that actually has a "functional advantage"?

 

Debatable.

Also, most subframe braces are also tie bars (ASR, etc.), so an extra tie bar becomes redundant and pointless.

 

While I think a lot of people use aftermarket LCA's just for bling, they do have some functional advantages. The cheaper ones may have poorer quality bushings, but decent brands have harder rubber or polyurethane bushings that don't flex as much under heavy cornering. Some brands also have multiple sway bar mounting points (such as S2 or BWR), which is helpful installing a rear sway bar on a lowered car so you can mount it without putting too much strain on the bar or links under steady state.

Keep in mind too that these LCA's are often cheaper than replacements from Honda, and they all come in anodized black as well, so you don't have to be that guy cruising around with neon colored LCA's to use them.

Tie bars and subframe braces are almost completely useless, unless you're using it to mount a beefy sway bar to. For all the extra rigidity they actually give you on their own you'd have to really be driving the car at its limits to feel any difference. An ASR brace and sway bar combo on the other hand will give you a decent performance gain.

 

I have my Function7's for two reasons:

1) They are pretty
2) because I can