I recently picked up a 00 CRV EX 4WD with the 5 speed manual trans and 292k on the clock. I come from a Honda and BMW tuning background (still have my EM1) and I'm now building this CRV to be a jack-of-all-trades project (off road/rally/street/track) and in the process I've been inspecting and tinkering with different aspects of the car. Having my EM1 to compare this thing to (which is also fairly modded) has been an interesting experience due to the lack of forum support on modding the CRV. In fact when I first looked at the suspension on the RD1 I thought, like most threads state, "oh look, it looks just like EM1 suspension." And it does look same, but it's not, not even close.

That brings me to my reason for creating this thread, to dispel all the misinformation about the RD1 VS EK/EM1. The following is a work-in-progress so bear with me as I update it.

Knuckle (Right side):
EM1 ( 51210-S04-N10)
CRV (51210-S10-A10)

Haven't done a major comparison yet however there are some differences I already know about.

• Hub/Wheel Bearing
  • CRV obviously has a 5 lug hub but it also uses a different size wheel bearing (more to come on that)
• Axle
  • CRV uses a 36mm axle instead of the 32mm found in just about every Civic-type chassis of the double wishbone era (88-01)

Front Lower Control Arm
EM1
CRV

The CRV front lower control arm looks the same as the EM1 BUT it turns out the it's actually ~20mm "wider" (from the front subframe measured out toward the knuckle). Since the ride height is so different on the CRV I suspect that this was done to increase stability and to compensate for changes in the front suspension geometry.

Side note: This has fantastic implications for EK cars because it means you could run the CRV front lower control arms (but you HAVE to run the longer inner tie rods from the CRV steering rack with it) and get a factory widebody style front suspension.

Front Upper Control Arm
EM1
CRV

They are vastly different, more on this one in my next update.

 

 

glad to see someone talking about this stuff, one thing i came across while searching for front lower control arm bushings and shock mount bushings is that prothane and energy suspension actually list crv lower control arm and shock mount bushings as the same bushings used on ek NOT em1 which is completely wrong, the crv must use em1 lower control arm and shock mount bushings, i even called prothane to let them know that they are selling the wrong parts to crv owners and they simply told me that i was the only person who had ever brought this to their attention and they will continue to sell the bushings as they do now, and i 100% know that i am correct because i ended up replacing my lower control arm bushings and shock mount bushings and used the em1 stuff and was the correct fit, crv and em1 even have the same part number for the front shock fork and all other ek models use a different fork. hope all that makes sense.

one more thing ive thought about in regards to people lowering there ek, instead of using a camber kit they could possibly just use crv upper control arms to correct there negative camber, i have not had the opportunity to compare them side by side so i dont know how realistic this idea would be but its just a thought.

 

 

Was wondering if you had any experience in the bay? I have a 98 crv I'm working on and finding parts like clutch and fuel line from chase bays that is only made for the civic and integra. Trying to see if the dimensions are the same in the bay so that I can get these parts for the crv. Theres a lot of other parts but I'm trying to bring a lot of stuff to the crv community and figuring out all of this is the first step.