Hi there. Bought the del sol vtec brand new almost 20 years ago. Worked out great. Thought I had to let it get old with me. But I see some of you are doing incredible things to your cars.

I would love to redo the suspension with the ground control/koni shocks. Only thing don't know what spring rates and exactly which shocks. For now it would all be for the pleasure of it. Is there anything I really should be "rejuvenating"?

Don't the wheel bearings or something finally give up?

 

It really depends how well you've taken care of the car and kept up on routine maintenance.

The person I bought my Civic from hadn't taken care of it so I recently went through and replaced practically everything in the my front and rear suspension:

Ball joints
Upper Control Arms
Inner Tie Rods
Outer Tie Rods
Wheel Bearings

I got an Energy Suspension master bushing kit to replace all of the worn out bushings in the car. All of this was definitely a job and took me and buddy about 3 days.

 

Hi Dabolina

I took care of it at the beginning but less and less as the years went by.
Right now the car does need some TLC.
It failed the smog a few weeks ago so I finally changed the spark plug wires (the originals were still on there as far as I remember) and also put some bosch spark plugs (platinum+4) I bought years ago and never got around to changing. (the car did have tune-ups etc along the way so spark plugs and distributor, fuel filter were changed)

With that it squeaked by the smog re-test.

Having seen the diy effort here I thought I could manage changing the pcv valve but instead I broke it off on the manifold. (this was probably the original 20 yr old pcv valve). So right now I am driving around with the pcv valve hose plugged and a partial hole in the manifold

Do you consider the energy suspension bushings as good as the OEM?
Not that it would not be better than 20yr old OEM parts but somehow I want to feel I am making the car as good as or better than when I bought it.

 

The Energy kit is definitely an upgrade, if you install it correctly. Install it wrong, and at best, it'll squeak and chatter all the way down the road. At worst, it'll shred itself in half in a few months. They are polyurethane bushings, which have a tendency to be harder than the stock rubbers, and you'll definitely notice it. For suspension components, though, you'll notice it in a good way.

 

It sounds like your car is a daily driver.

It can be restored and improved apon for sure, but be careful which options you choose! For a mild drop, use a quality strut Koni or Tokico, matched with a good lowering coil for ride quality. You really only to lower that car an inch or and inch and a half.......this combo would make a major improvement in handling and still ride nice.

I would be careful about energy bushings. yes, they perform well, but are also known to be harsh on the street, one of the main reason stock bushings are rubber. Replacement of even new stock worn bushings are very nice.

The car use a good update with the rear trailing arm bushings. In this case you could get away with the energy bushing, or even hardrace or prothane.

Adding a good beefy rear sway bar can do wonders for handling also, far better than stock.....a mod i add to many of my cars.

If you are worried about the wheel bearings, check to see if they have freeplay. If so, replace with oem, they do last a long time

 

Def replace all the bushings. It will feel like a new car. I put energy suspension on mine but would rather have used hard race bushings.