The CR-X

[tinkerbell]

i would have gone 1/2in fittings for your Asahi can, but will still work...

18/16 is good start, as long as the shocks are tuned 'revalved' to suit... and depending on your rear ARB size... i think this is the US stylz downfall... lack of shock tuning?

[ChargeR]

I would have gone 1/2in fittings for your Asahi can, but will still work...

18/16 is good start, as long as the shocks are tuned 'revalved' to suit... and depending on your rear ARB size... i think this is the US stylz downfall... lack of shock tuning?

I didn't think too much about the barb fitting sizes, I just bought the same size as the barb on my in line radiator filler. Hopefully it will work okay, I hate cooling problems.

Yes 18/16 seems a reasonable start, if anything I might go down in rear spring rate as I'll be running quite a large rear bar (More on this soon) and bump up the front rate so I can run the car a tiny bit lower. The shocks should be up to the task, they're recommended for rates up to 1000lb/in which is what the front Eibach ERS springs that I bought actually are, I only converted to metric and rounded up since most guys here are used to spring rates in kg/mm. I'm looking forward to testing out the shocks, but these will only be an interim set of dampers until I can afford something more fancy.

I think there's a myriad of problems with the US style of having low front rates and massive rear rates and bars. An issue that I see is that sometimes the guys run the front of the car at too low a ride height for their soft front rates, so the bump stops or shock towers end up coming into play as soon as they enter a corner, effectively shifting their roll stiffness bias forward and making the thing understeer, so they add more rear spring! On top of that their whole theory is based on saturating the outside rear tyre long before the fronts using very rear biased roll stiffness as the only way to make the front grip, which is ridiculous, there's a great many ways to skin a cat. These are the same guys that sniff at staggered wheel and tyre setups as being "mad JDM tyte" but would probably think nothing of the massive tyre and wheel stagger on a 911 porsche for example, which is basically the same thing, using tyre size to help correct issues brought on by a fundamental layout problem.

I think that having enough travel at the front, enough static camber, and enough roll stiffness to keep the outside front tyre at a comfortable angle to the road surface to maximise the tyre grip at the front is a good way to start. Then add in a slight rear bias in roll stiffness/suspension frequencies and tune it from there with alignment and bars/springs.

[ChargeR]

Machining boss

A quick update from today, I was at work so I decided to have a crack at butchering the EG Checkerd Sports boss kit to make it fit the EF. According to the nice fellow that sold it to me, I only needed to take 0.38" off the end as the splined section of the EF steering column is not as long as the later models.

So I hacked the end off with a hacksaw and neatened it up on the old school lathe, then machined off the 'Checkerd Sports' lettering from the other end. I have nothing against the guy that makes them, I just thought it looked untidy. I then began polishing it:



I'll finish tidying it up later in the week and then I'll start looking at getting it anodised black.

[MYDC5R]

mmm amazing updates Tom, keep it up =)

[andrew84tran]

will you be going with a two way or single setup? curious as to the complexity of the suspension tuning you have planned for the car

sweet ride, keep it up

[rookie]

Is this going to be ready for HNats? :3

[felixR]

Nice read about how the US like to setup their suspension!

[Berty]

Love the boss kit Tom. Did you purchase it overseas?

[ChargeR]

mmm amazing updates Tom, keep it up =)

Thanks!

will you be going with a two way or single setup? curious as to the complexity of the suspension tuning you have planned for the car

sweet ride, keep it up

Thanks mate. I'll be going with single adjustable, rebound only, shocks initially. I've been investigating some 2-3 way adjustable options but at the stage I'm at the cost and complexity is not worthwhile. There's going to be so many things that need tweaking/fixing on this car I thought it best to start simple with the suspension, set it and forget it initially, and once I've got a few laps under my belt look at cheap but effective changes like springs and bars before delving into shocks.

Is this going to be ready for HNats? :3

As you might have guessed, nope. I'll be bringing something else up to Winton that day..

Nice read about how the US like to setup their suspension!

Thanks Felix, I'm glad someone reads my ramblings.

Love the boss kit Tom. Did you purchase it overseas?

Cheers Berty, I bought the boss kit direct from Checkerd Sports in the US, HERE. The guy was easy to deal with, the shipping price a bit exorbitant and rudely they have started making the EF kit again so that would have saved me having to butcher the EG one!

[ChargeR]

ASR 32mm rear bar

Another quick update, yesterday my rear sway bar and subframe braces turned up from ASR. I chose the 32mm hollow bar from ASR, mostly because it looks nice, it's light and there aren't a lot of great options for the EF/ED chassis anyway. The bar mounts where the OEM bar bolts to the chassis, with new brackets shown below. With the 0.95" wall thickness I went for it should give about as much roll stiffness as a 26mm solid bar, although it will probably be a little stiffer than the typical street style bar due to the bronze bushes used rather than a rubber or urethane part, as well as being more linear as there'll be no bushing deflection.









I also bought the ASR rear subframe brace as I've heard of a few CR-X rear subframe failures, not from sway bar forces as the bar mounts elsewhere but simply from the cornering forces transmitted through the lower control arms. These are old and flimsy cars. The brace links the two inner LCA pivots and bolts to the boot floor in the spare wheel well.

Exhaust clearance is going to be poor at best, hopefully I can still make a decent sized muffler fit under the back of the car for street use.

[felixR]

That's a fat RSB!

Nice purchase.

[ChargeR]

Bushes

So nothing much has been happening on the CR-X, I've been busy organising events and budget constraints have slowed things down a bit. While that situation fixes itself I'm going to start doing some of the smaller jobs that I've been putting off.

With this in mind after work this evening I started pressing the old bushes out of the EF8 front lower control arms and the ED9 rear lower control arms I picked up so I can use fork style rear shocks in place of the original Type R style eyelet EF8 rear LCA.

EF8 and Aussie model front lower control arms are different, the attachment point for the front sway bar is better on the EF8 arms so I'll be using them. The ED9 models have a round hole and a rubber bush like old cars, whereas the EF8 arm has a threaded hole forward into the arm so a normal end link may be used, or a spherical end link as I'll probably end up doing.



I managed to get about half way through before I'd done all the easy ones and the rest didn't want to come out easily with my array of sockets. I'll find some bits of pipe to try again tomorrow on the remaining bushes and failing that I'll just cut them out. Once these are done I can drop them off to be sandblasted and powdercoated along with a few other bits. I'll be using a combination of rubber and sphericals throughout.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Interesting post about the variations of the lower control arms, keep up the good work mate. Will you be replacing all the suspension bushings on the CR-X?

[DaRKNT]

Clean up that wiring! OHS :P

Good read. I crave these updates Tom.

[ChargeR]

Interesting post about the variations of the lower control arms, keep up the good work mate. Will you be replacing all the suspension bushings on the CR-X?

Yes I found it interesting too that Honda went to the effort of producing a whole new lower control arm just for the VTEC models. Yep I'll be replacing all the bushes, spherical bearings in a few spots but mostly OEM rubber.

Clean up that wiring! OHS :P

Good read. I crave these updates Tom.

Ha OHS don't do audits in backyards!

Thanks mate, hopefully I'll get more frequent updates happening from now on.