If you have anything other than a 92-95 Civic, post it in here
User avatar
By EconoBox
#358799
Driv-it-hard wrote:The good news is that your ok . Keep the fender on the wall of memories. The day you broke and fixed her on the side of the road to get home 600 + miles..
My hat comes off to you.
Hope to see he up and running again.


Thanks!

I tracked down and got one replacement wheel! Everyone including the manufacturer (Varrstoen) was out of stock in my size. I found a damaged on in a warehouse and snagged it. It has a really slight curb rash and they considered it unsellable due to the blemish so I picked it up cheap. I daily on the wheels so I have some little chips and scratches so the blemish doesn't bother me.

Also decided I'm going to step up from the 225/40r18 tire I have been running and get 245/40r18s. I'm going to have to raise the suspension slightly to make them work but I've been considering doing the tire size upgrade for a while and driving my car hard all last week made me finally decide to do it.

Also since a lot of people say my car isn't functional because of how low it is... Before the accident I was having a really fun trip :D
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My wheels don't rub on anything unless I am at just about full lock, or going around a turn with an big elevation change. So in Florida I never see these conditions except when I'm going 0.5mph into my driveway. Up on the Dragon there are a few hairpins with elevation changes which is my reason for wanting to bump the suspension up slightly. I think with the new tires and about 1/2inch height increase it should be perfect. Then in a few months when I am back up at the cabin
again I will be able to not rub.
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By EconoBox
#358800 With the TSX being down waiting on my replacement wheel to come in I needed to clear my head and do something simple for a friends car. My friend with the air suspension TL I posted before has sold it and moved on to a 350z. His coilovers came in while we were gone on vacation and he needed a helping hand to get them installed.

The 350z stock last week. We took it up to the mountains along with our little group. I snagged a picture of him while he was cruising down the Cherahola Skyway.
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The new coilovers:
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Everything laid out on the bench in his shop:
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Got the Z up on jack stands ready to do work.
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Stock Front suspension:
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Stock rear suspension NOTE THE SEPERATE SPRING AND SHOCK:
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New rear suspension, Fortune Auto true coilover conversion with TruHart adjustable camber and control arm:
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New front suspension, Fortune Auto coilover with TruHart adjustable upper control arm:
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Back on the ground all tightened up. We didn't go too low since he thought it would look bad on the stock wheels.
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I'll give first impressions of the upgrade a bit later today when it gets off the alignment rack at work.

Was a nice couple hours of work to clear my head. Don't know why but I love working on cars!
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By EconoBox
#358816 Thanks Teal_dx. That image is by Killboy.com he is the "official" photographer on the Dragon. I didn't have any photographer buddies with me so I had to pay for the picture. [smilie=BangHead.gif] At least it was a really good shot.

I had a couple of friends that tagged along on the trip. This is my buddy Mark (see above suspension post) celebrating his first time driving the Z hard. We are planning to go back in a couple of months for a summer trip with some more car friends. That way he can get some seat time with the new suspension. He should have upgraded sway bars and new wheels and tires by then.
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Before the weekend up in the mountains we went to Import Alliance. I haven't gone through all the images yet... I really need to get them done for my website. But here was a cool one of a burnout at the meet.
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A little way off the road for the Dragon (US 129) is Fontana Dam. The road getting here (N Carolina 28 aka Moonshiner 28) is another really fun road. Took a few panoramic shots just to play around with the camera. Each of these is composed of 10-15 full resolution images from my camera. Only uploaded low resolution ones to share on facebook. The full files are quite large.

View from the top of Fontana Dam.
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The reservoir lake behind Fontana Dam.
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Once you drive down the Dragon you can usually stop on the side of the road and look out onto the Little Tennessee River but the had the dam holding back water while they were doing some maintenance and inspections on it.
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User avatar
By EconoBox
#358819
Driv-it-hard wrote:Great f-ing pictures..... I love the view and landscape.
We don't have any of those things in Miami ....



Thanks!

We have some killer beaches here though. My beach was rated #1 (Clearwater) and Miami is pretty awesome too. I haven't been down that way in a long time though.

It is definitely a welcome change of scenery though. I absolutely love the mountains...
Except the fog...

My car broke while taking my girlfriend out for what was suppose to be breakfast at her favorite restaurant in the area. After spending a whole day fixing it I was determined to get there and eat so it turned into dinner plans :lol: So after fixing it we went into Pigeon Forge to eat at this place called the Old Mill (see notes below)** and on the way back we encountered the absolute worst driving conditions I have been in/seen in my life.
It was raining on and off, foggy, and at this altitude there was still snow on the ground. So between the steam/mist of melting snow, the fog, and rain you could see only about three feet in front of you with the headlights and foglights on. Turned my dimmer all the way down and watched the yellow line. Absolute worst drive ever. The road through the mountains is almost 50 miles long and around 15 miles of it was in these conditions and I was afraid to go over about 10mph. I've driven in white out/blizzard snow in Colorado and this was worse.

**I highly recommend The Old Mill, think of a cracker barrel on steroids, like $20 a person gets you more than 3 people can eat. You get your entree and included in the price is ALL of the sides and a choice of dessert. Also the food was very good and the banana pudding for desert was amazing.
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By EconoBox
#358825 Finally got under the car last night. Lower control arm seems to be the only thing noticeably damaged. It is twisted where the shock mounts you can see the bushing is twisted to let the shock fork mount. I didn't take any pictures since I was under the car for just a moment to make sure I ordered all the correct parts to get her driving again.

Last night I got the rest of the mechanically necessary parts ordered.
-New wheel
-4 New Nitto Neo Gen 225/40r18 tires
-HardRace front lower control arms with hardened rubber bushings

Still working on finding a black OEM fender in good shape. I work for a Honda dealership so I'm using my connections with junkyards that we use for our collision center parts. Worst case scenario I'll end up getting a clean used fender and dropping it off for a coat of paint. I'm trying to find a used one though just for simplicity and usually it will be a much closer match than painting a single panel.

*** also updated mod list on page 1***
User avatar
By Driv-it-hard
#358826
EconoBox wrote:
Driv-it-hard wrote:Great f-ing pictures..... I love the view and landscape.
We don't have any of those things in Miami ....



Thanks!

We have some killer beaches here though. My beach was rated #1 (Clearwater) and Miami is pretty awesome too. I haven't been down that way in a long time though.

It is definitely a welcome change of scenery though. I absolutely love the mountains...
Except the fog...

My car broke while taking my girlfriend out for what was suppose to be breakfast at her favorite restaurant in the area. After spending a whole day fixing it I was determined to get there and eat so it turned into dinner plans :lol: So after fixing it we went into Pigeon Forge to eat at this place called the Old Mill (see notes below)** and on the way back we encountered the absolute worst driving conditions I have been in/seen in my life.
It was raining on and off, foggy, and at this altitude there was still snow on the ground. So between the steam/mist of melting snow, the fog, and rain you could see only about three feet in front of you with the headlights and foglights on. Turned my dimmer all the way down and watched the yellow line. Absolute worst drive ever. The road through the mountains is almost 50 miles long and around 15 miles of it was in these conditions and I was afraid to go over about 10mph. I've driven in white out/blizzard snow in Colorado and this was worse.

**I highly recommend The Old Mill, think of a cracker barrel on steroids, like $20 a person gets you more than 3 people can eat. You get your entree and included in the price is ALL of the sides and a choice of dessert. Also the food was very good and the banana pudding for desert was amazing.



I agree with you all the way. I worked for Bridgestone/Firestone and one of our headquarters is located in Clearwater. We would fly from Fort Lauderdale to Clearwater for seminars. What a different change of people and attitude of people. The locals are so nice and inviting . There is rarely any traffic and the beaches are wonderful.
If you come down to Miami, let me know so we can hang out. We were supposed to travel to Tampa so time last year, that didn't happened.. May be some this year..
The driving from through the bad weather let's you know how fortunate we are in Florida not having all those weather changes at one time . I know you guys up there get colder than us down here, but nothing like what you went through...
I want to look up the restaurant , sound good eats.
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By EconoBox
#358832 So good/bad news...

HeelToeAuto called me late yesterday to let me know the HardRace LCAs that I ordered were on intergalactic back order with no foreseeable delivery date I chose to cancel the order.

After BSing with the guy for a few minutes about the TSX and getting his opinion on some different brake options and other small parts. I mentioned that I was curious if there were any polyurethane or reliable spherical options for bushings on the LCA. There isn't a whole lot out there for these arms... but they sell a Fastline Spherical bushing kit that they have on their shop TSX. The kit is pricey and comes with the 4 bushings for the LCA mounting points. They are changing the kit to only included the 2 compliance bushings because the small bushings added minimal benefit and don't last very long. After several years of use they haven't had their compliance bushing fail from street use yet. So I worked out a deal to only get the 2 compliance bushings only and give them a shot. I have used spherical bushings before and they don't typically last on high mileage use street cars. I will definitely be writing a detailed write-up and review on these and checking in every so often as I rack up the miles so people can see how they last on a street car.

But now I need an OEM control arm. Oh that's right, I work in parts at a Honda store. Done. Ordered a replacement OEM LCA which should be here tomorrow along with my new tires. The replacement wheel shows Friday as the UPS delivery date. The only thing I don't have tracking on yet are the new bushings.
User avatar
By EconoBox
#358833
Driv-it-hard wrote:I agree with you all the way. I worked for Bridgestone/Firestone and one of our headquarters is located in Clearwater. We would fly from Fort Lauderdale to Clearwater for seminars. What a different change of people and attitude of people. The locals are so nice and inviting . There is rarely any traffic and the beaches are wonderful.
If you come down to Miami, let me know so we can hang out. We were supposed to travel to Tampa so time last year, that didn't happened.. May be some this year..
The driving from through the bad weather let's you know how fortunate we are in Florida not having all those weather changes at one time . I know you guys up there get colder than us down here, but nothing like what you went through...
I want to look up the restaurant , sound good eats.


I wanna know when the last time you were up this way was lmao.

They did a ton of redesigning the roads around here and lots of construction, which is all done finally. But US19 is a traffic nightmare and the roads leading to Clearwater beach have the worst traffic. I went down to Shepherd's for Spring break and getting down to the Clearwater beach round a bout from Alt19 took almost 3 hours lmao.

I will agree that people up here have a different attitude than further South... but if you go up into the mountains you definitely wouldn't call anyone in Clearwater nice lmao.

If I come down to Miami I'll definitely hit you up. I am suppose to be photographing some modified exotics for my website and the owner lives down that way. If I end up driving down I'll make a weekend out of it.
User avatar
By EconoBox
#358867 I'll hit you up when I have plans to head down your way!

Update:
I finally got all of my parts in and was so excited to finally start putting her back together I didn't take too many pics.

With the driver' side getting a new LCA with fresh bushings and the passenger side having over 120k on the stock rubber bushings it felt like a good time to go ahead and upgrade the compliance bushings. The original plan was both new control arms but this ended up working out great!

The sexy new Fastline compliance bushings (made by PCI, Sold by HeelToeAuto.com)
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You can't see quite how bad the passenger side compliance bushing was from these two pictures but it is actually ripped all the way through with just a small bit of rubber still attached.
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After about 30 seconds with the fancy hydraulic press at work.
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Also got my new Nitto Neo Gen tires in.
Hunter just installed our new balance machine and I got to do the very first set of wheels on it. This thing tells you everything about the wheel and tire you have being balanced.
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After mounting and balancing my tires and pressing in the new compliance bushings I headed back home from the shop and installed everything into my car. Everything isn't straight yet... It's disappointing but expected. The passenger compliance bushing was shot. This was probably pretty worn out before the accident and my last alignment was done compensating for that sag in the suspension. With two rock solid new compliance bushings the car, while not perfect, feels very safe to drive and rode straight.

I drove her to work this morning for the first time. I'm going to get her on the alignment rack at lunch time and check everything out. If I can get the alignment within spec I'll give a review on the compliance bushings (they feel amazing so far). If it's still out of spec I should be able to get a better view of anything else bent from the accident. With the measurements from the alignment rack it will help narrow that down.
User avatar
By Driv-it-hard
#358871
EconoBox wrote:I'll hit you up when I have plans to head down your way!

Update:
I finally got all of my parts in and was so excited to finally start putting her back together I didn't take too many pics.

With the driver' side getting a new LCA with fresh bushings and the passenger side having over 120k on the stock rubber bushings it felt like a good time to go ahead and upgrade the compliance bushings. The original plan was both new control arms but this ended up working out great!

The sexy new Fastline compliance bushings (made by PCI, Sold by HeelToeAuto.com)
Image

You can't see quite how bad the passenger side compliance bushing was from these two pictures but it is actually ripped all the way through with just a small bit of rubber still attached.
Image

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After about 30 seconds with the fancy hydraulic press at work.
Image


Also got my new Nitto Neo Gen tires in.
Hunter just installed our new balance machine and I got to do the very first set of wheels on it. This thing tells you everything about the wheel and tire you have being balanced.
Image


After mounting and balancing my tires and pressing in the new compliance bushings I headed back home from the shop and installed everything into my car. Everything isn't straight yet... It's disappointing but expected. The passenger compliance bushing was shot. This was probably pretty worn out before the accident and my last alignment was done compensating for that sag in the suspension. With two rock solid new compliance bushings the car, while not perfect, feels very safe to drive and rode straight.

I drove her to work this morning for the first time. I'm going to get her on the alignment rack at lunch time and check everything out. If I can get the alignment within spec I'll give a review on the compliance bushings (they feel amazing so far). If it's still out of spec I should be able to get a better view of anything else bent from the accident. With the measurements from the alignment rack it will help narrow that down.


Anytime !!! Car is coming back together. Did you place it on the frame rack to make sure everything is straight ?
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By EconoBox
#358873 It's going on the alignment rack any minute now.

We loosened the steering rack, motor mount bolts, and steering rack. We are going to shift the subframe to even out the caster in case it moved. From the alignment rack readings we should be able to see if there is anymore damage. The readings should give me an idea what/if anything else is damaged. Worst case scenario I just have to drive across the street to our collision building and put it on the frame rack to measure the subframe.