Rilas : 1993 Accord SE

[apalileo]

I like where you're going with this! I didn't know that the Neuspeed Race springs had free play on full droop. That's crazy to me! I would imagine that the full springs would always be designed according to full shock extension, but i guess since they're a linear rate spring that they don't have anything to take up slack for the amount of lowering they provide.

I was just looking at my old Sportline setup and it got me thinking about your plans: The helper spring would have to be mounted on top of the Race spring because of the way the ends are designed. On the Race spring, much like the Sportlines, the top coil is ground flat but the bottom coil is simply terminated cross-sectionally. Therein lies the issue. Mounting the helper spring at the bottom of the Race spring would cause the helper to seat askew when weight is placed on it. The perch and the spring would sandwich the helper, but the mating surfaces wouldn't be flat and parallel, creating uneven compression and uneven block height. To remedy this, you'd have to mount the helper spring above the Race spring. Lowering springs for the CB/CD chassis have that one tight wind at the bottom so it has about a 2.5" ID at the perch. Then the rest of the spring appears to have a 3" ID (don't quote me on that). If so, you'd probably have to look at getting Eibach SPACER300 and HELPER300 in this case (I couldn't find specs on Hypercoils HELPERSPRG-3.00 so it may be too long or short). This would also benefit in the fact that the helper would better fill out the Energy Suspension spring isolator up top to secure it centered in the top hat.

I can't verify these numbers because I don't have access to Neuspeed Race springs, but based on my experience with helpers, I gained a good understanding of the criteria that must be met to use them. The Energy Suspension top hat and Eibach spring spacer over the flattened top of the Race spring would both provide flat, parallel mating surfaces so that the helper spring would properly compress to even block height under load. They would also keep the springs from arcing on full droop. My helper springs bow out just a little on full droop, and that's with flat Ground-Control perches and Eibach spacers.

If you have the Race's off of the car, measure the ID of the top and that should get you the measurement you need to verify which helper and spacer you need.

I hope this helps more than it confuses!

[Chrisnick]

You shouldn't need the helper or spacer at all with those springs.

If you want to sell them, I'll take them off your hands.

[Rilas]

I wasn't sure as with regular shocks these springs are too short at full droop. I'll let you know Chrisnick. As I may not even open them at all. We shall see once it all arrives.

Also I wasn't even sure what stuff to order size wise as I couldn't find specs on the diameter of the springs. So I'll get them measured and post it up somewhere. Also I'm not taking them off to measure to put them back on the same car. I'm only doing this one time.

Also thanks for the input both of you. Apalileo I got the idea for the helpers from your post and knew I could use them on the flats of the springs, it's just been so long I couldn't remember if it would be the top or the bottom. But it would absolutely have to be the top with just the lowering springs. Although it would be totally awesome to not have to use the extra parts and just pass them along. Would save some money on the back end. This is going to be one of those live and learn experience either way.

[apalileo]

Hopefully the Bilstein's will alleviate the free play with your springs. I wasn't certain if you had them out of the car yet so I didn't know if you could measure them. Way too much work to pull just for measurement, I agree.

The one thing I did find myself missing about the Sportlines is that the ride height is fixed. Granted I could have mounted them on the Koni Sports and moved the perches, but those are also fixed positions as well. Ride height adjustment on coilovers is tedious. I've got my setup just how I want it and will probably never make another adjustment again.

In time I'm likely going to give the Bilstein's a try myself. I have Chrisnick to thank for his great information and feedback he's posted on them here on the forums.

[Rilas]

Alright so I'm running behind in updates but I've just been busy beyond belief. Last Thursday I picked up the head from the machine shop to check it's fit against the intake manifold. Also I got in some of the suspension parts.

H22A1 Cylinder Head 1


H22A1 Cylinder Head 2


H22A1 Cylinder Head 3


H22A1 Cylinder Head 4


H22A1 Cylinder Head 5


H22A Intake Manifold 1 (I am going to port match this sometime this week hopefully. But honestly they aren't too bad for matching up at all. I'm also going to remove the casting from the inside of the runners up to the egr holes.)


H22A Intake Manifold 2


Suspension Components


If you notice in the last pictures I ordered the wrong bushings for the top hats of the struts. This wasn't a big deal, as I ordered the parts as, a just in case. I rebuilt the entire suspension on the sedan 2.5 years ago. This was done with Energy Suspension in the front and Prothane in the rear. The spring isolator bushings and the strut top mount bushings still looked great. No signs of wear at all. Also the bushings in the lower control arms show no signs of deformation after all this time as well. So things have held up better than I had expected. This is even with blown shocks and really no give in the suspension so they have seen their fair share of abuse.

[Rilas]

Friday night my new struts finally showed up. I got the fronts out of the sedan and swapped out the struts and put them back on the sedan. At first this wasn't my goal. I was just going to swap the entire suspension from the sedan to the coupe. Then I realized that I would need an alignment on both cars right away. This was a no go, so I just swapped the springs and top hats to the new struts and regreased the bushings so they won't squeak.



These struts have made a huge improvement in the feel of the ride. It's not nearly so harsh in the front anymore. Obviously it's stiffer than stock but compared to what I've been riding on for a long time, it's freaking AWESOME. The suspension is now actually soaking up the dips, bumps, pot holes and what have you. It's really hard to tell though how much better the front really is. Because while it soaks up the road imperfections, the rear hits the same thing within a second and is very rough. So until the rear is done as well I won't really know how good these struts are. Also it turns out all of the extra suspension components turned out to well, be extras.

[Rilas]

Yesterday I got a few goodies in the mail for Lola. I think this is the end of the suspension for the time being. Other than the 2 rear struts. After these are installed, the focus is turning back towards the engine.

Innovative Traction Bar and Motor Mounts 1 (Thanks to jdm92_accorn for the motor mounts. Was a great price!)


Innovative Traction Bar and Motor Mounts 2


Innovative Traction Bar and Motor Mounts 3


I'm going to try the torque mount out on my sedan. As you can tell the coupe will not have the front torque mount as it has the innovative traction bar. Although this is one of the new bars and came with the plate for their new front torque mount. Depending on how things feel with the motor mounts and no torque mount, I may or not purchase it from them. If you guys haven't noticed by now the H22A1 is going to be a manual. Also the F series that will eventually end up in this car is also going to be a manual. The opportunity presented itself to pickup the drivers engine mount and the torque mount for almost the price of 1 new mount I had to get on it. I've also ordered the auto to manual trans mount from Innovative. I'm hoping that the trans mount and the drivers side engine mount will be enough to hold the engine with a stock rear mount. I want to try and keep the vibrations down to a minimum. I don't really want to have door panels or anything else vibrating, this may be unavoidable. If the stock rear mount isn't enough I'll try a prelude mount with the Energy Suspension insert. If that isn't enough I'll go back to the Accord mount and try the Prothane inserts that I've never used yet. If either of those are too rough, I'll probably stick with stock and pickup the front torque mount to see if that would make a difference. Time will tell on this one. I want to try and have this thing full ready to get on the road once the nicer weather finally appears. We had a few really nice days, and I was beginning to think it's time. Then this week it has snowed 3 times already. Oh well I keep telling myself no rush. It's only been almost 1.5 years of ownership with almost no driving it whatsoever.

[apalileo]

Your machinist does a damn fine job! That head looks factory new.

The Bilstein looks like it fits the Neuspeed very well. More incentive to save up for rears now. Good shocks make a world of difference.

Traction bar looks great! I personally would prefer to retain the front torque mount. I guess I like the idea of having two mounts working together to keep the engine in place during acceleration. My plan is to run Innovative Mounts front and back and OEM rubbers on the sides, but I look forward to seeing you test the various options.

[Rilas]

Your machinist does a damn fine job! That head looks factory new.

The Bilstein looks like it fits the Neuspeed very well. More incentive to save up for rears now. Good shocks make a world of difference.

Traction bar looks great! I personally would prefer to retain the front torque mount. I guess I like the idea of having two mounts working together to keep the engine in place during acceleration. My plan is to run Innovative Mounts front and back and OEM rubbers on the sides, but I look forward to seeing you test the various options.

Yeah I've been using this machinist for years now. They have always done fantastic work for me. Also since I've been a loyal customer for long enough now sometimes they will throw me a little freebie work. Sometimes free press work or whatever. Since they know I will usually be back with some larger project sooner or later. The block looks just as immaculate.

The Bilsteins fit the Nuespeed race springs like a glove. Just a slight compression to get the top hats bolted all the way down. I'm very pleased with how this setup has turned out. The rears will be getting ordered at the end of the week. Then back to engine parts and finish paying off the last little bit to the machine shop. I still have a few smaller projects I have to wrap up soon, to get them in the hot tank at the machine shop before I can't use it under my one time fee for the engine.

I also like the idea of having 2 mounts to help secure the engine from rocking. But with the Innovative traction bar for the time being I have to give up the front torque mount. After some testing I may just pick it up, but it isn't cheap at almost $200 for just the torque mount. I'll do some testing first and if I find it necessary I'll purchase it once that is decided. I don't now if I would run the rear mount from Innovative honestly. I have the ESP mounts and ran them in the sedan for awhile and the rear mount just seemed to create excessive vibrations. So I imagine the Innovative would do the same thing. I mean it did help with the engine rocking but also sounded like the car wanted to shake apart. If it was a track car I wouldn't mind but as a daily driver it was unbearable.

[Chrisnick]

Something that you MIGHT have to do with your front shocks is flip the spring perches. It all depends on your overall ride height once installed though. On my car, with the skunk2's(same springs as you have but a different brand/color. H&R race are also the same.), the front day about .75" lower than the rear. On the rear, I had the spring perch on the lower clip setting on the shock body and set as normal. On the front, I had to flip the perch and put the clip on the upper setting to get an even 12" hub center to fender.

On another front, my 7.25" tall 550lb eBay coilover springs have turned out to be a bit too much for the rear shocks. The passenger rear blew the seal and lost fluid. Dropping down to an 9" tall 400/450lb spring and sending my bilsteins back for a warranty. Front seem to be doing just fine still, but I'll keep an eye on them. Zero issues were had with the Bilsteins on the much more conservatively sprung progressive skunk2 coils previously.

Still interested in those helpers/spacers if you want to sell

[Chrisnick]

don't thank me, thank www.farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets.html ! Read all the goodness, it's quite informative!

[Rilas]

Something that you MIGHT have to do with your front shocks is flip the spring perches. It all depends on your overall ride height once installed though. On my car, with the skunk2's(same springs as you have but a different brand/color. H&R race are also the same.), the front day about .75" lower than the rear. On the rear, I had the spring perch on the lower clip setting on the shock body and set as normal. On the front, I had to flip the perch and put the clip on the upper setting to get an even 12" hub center to fender.

On another front, my 7.25" tall 550lb eBay coilover springs have turned out to be a bit too much for the rear shocks. The passenger rear blew the seal and lost fluid. Dropping down to an 9" tall 400/450lb spring and sending my bilsteins back for a warranty. Front seem to be doing just fine still, but I'll keep an eye on them. Zero issues were had with the Bilsteins on the much more conservatively sprung progressive skunk2 coils previously.

Still interested in those helpers/spacers if you want to sell

I think on the fronts I'm going to do what you did with the perch. Move it up at least and possibly flip it over. I'll probably look into that this weekend. That sucks that the springs caused the shock to blow out. Hopefully they will have no problems handling the 400/450lb springs.

On another note since your are our member that seems to be the most serious about auto crossing. What would be a good alignment setup for a daily driver that might auto cross a few times a summer.

Toe?
Camber?
Caster?

I've slowly been reading on the site you linked on the post above. Almost everything I've read so far I've known, but I haven't read all that much on the site yet. Thanks for the link though.

[Rilas]

This weekend I managed to get a few things done.

I took the front struts off the sedan again and changed up the spring perches on them. They are now on the upper clip location with the perches flipped upside down. This ended up raising the overall ride height about 3/4-1". I'm not totally sure since I haven't measured hub center to fender yet. I've been putting this off because right now the rear is on totally blown struts. Once the new rear struts come in I'll get the ride height leveled out. So the ride has improved a ton already just by adjusting the perches. The ride now actually feels like the struts are doing the job they are supposed to be doing. Soaking up the road imperfections. The drive into work this morning was so much better than even last week. Although now the car is sitting a bit higher than I would like. But it's hard to tell without the back end being done as well. I did order the rear struts this past Friday. They should be in by the end of Thursday. Also I bled all 4 of the brakes in the sedan. While working on the struts I noticed the brake fluid was a little low. So in going to top it off, I noticed it was starting to look a bit grey/black. So I ended up flushing all 4 corners yesterday. Braking feel is improved a bit.

So now I'm at a cross roads for the time being. I'm trying to figure out if I should get the machine shop paid off. Or if I should order a bunch of the parts I will still need to get the engine running. Oh well I'm sure in the next few days I will have made up my mind on this.

Also on Friday I received my Auto to Manual Innovative mount. So I'm one step closer to finally getting Lola converted over to a manual!

[apalileo]

Good update. So what do you suppose accounts for the improved ride up front with the flipped and raised perch? It sounds like you have a bit more stroke on the shock?

Despite what you decide to spend on, I'm sure in time it'll all get handled. It's literally just in what order it all happens.

[Rilas]

Good update. So what do you suppose accounts for the improved ride up front with the flipped and raised perch? It sounds like you have a bit more stroke on the shock?

Despite what you decide to spend on, I'm sure in time it'll all get handled. It's literally just in what order it all happens.

So raising and then flipping the perch has raised where the bottom of the springs sits by about 2". So the spring is quite a bit more compressed sitting at rest now. So aside from raising up the body some, it has given the shock more stroke as you mentioned, while not raising the car nearly as much as I thought it might. But like I said I really need to get the rears in my hands so I can get the ride height adjusted correctly. So far though I am thoroughly impressed with the ride in the front of the car now. Going from something that was more or less riding on the tires, as far as suspension give, to something with a somewhat firm suspension that gives like it should. I'm getting really anxious to get this stuff moved over to Lola though and start driving her. Although it did snow 5 days last week. Hopefully the warmer weather is coming very soon.