Rilas : 1993 Accord SE

[Chrisnick]

What that basically does is get the shock off the bumpstop and into a more useable range of shock motion and damping. What's your hub center to fender measurement? Once I did this, I was at 13.75" from hub center to fender(eventually settled to about 13") but noticed the same improvement in ride quality. Going to a 25" tall tire helped fill the fender gap and had a similar effect on ride quality. I'll still be sticking with a 25" tall tire, but am going to try to get static ride height down to about 12-12.5" front and rear- I have extended tophats for the front with about an extra 1.5" of height and the rear has a TON of travel so I'm not worried about that.

Having a suspension and tire that allows the shocks to work well is tremendous. Functional ride height may not look "super dope" but the benefits greatly overcome the looks. My car was soooooo smooth on the Bilstein/skunk2's, I kind of miss it. Just wait until you go for a long drive on the freeway.

[Chrisnick]

As for alignment settings, I noticed a dramatic difference in turn in and on center feel with DA Integra upper control arms in the front. Gained about -2 degrees camber(almost -3 degrees) and a degree of positive caster(about +4 degrees). I used the accord anchor bolts and Integra arms from Beck-Arnley. I keep toe at the factory recommended specifications and have ZERO increased tire wear. The static camber gain in the rear of the car is plenty, there's not much that goes on there with FWD cars anyway.

[Rilas]

So I measured the hub center to fender last night. With the perch on the higher setting and flipped upside down I'm currently at 14.75". I was very surprised that it was actually this tall. I'm seriously considering picking up the FFC extended top hats so I can lower it back down a bit. I think I'll hold off for a little bit though as I would like to get the rears in so I have something to compare to. Although as it is currently the front is a bit higher than the rear with the blown shocks. I didn't even measure the rears for the time being.

Also the tire I am going to run for at least this summer, is 24" tall on a 17"x8" wheel (either 205/45/17 or a 225/45/17 I'll have to look tonight). So I'm sure I'll get some more road feel as I have less tire to absorb the imperfections. Either later this summer or during the winter I'm going to get some new tires for the car. These are a little over a year old and I just need to finish wearing them out.

[Rilas]

So a few updates. I've been busy and keeping this up to date has fallen a little behind.

Last week I started working on port matching and cleaning up the runners on the intake manifold. It took me a few nights working on it here and there. I finally finished this up on Friday after work and got it to the machine shop to get hot tanked. This coming Friday is the day it all gets picked up.

After updating my thread with the pictures of the Innovative traction bar, I installed it the next evening. So now this is done, and although I haven't driven the car with the traction bar yet, I can tell the steering is so much more responsive now. Now when turning the wheel the radius rod bushing no longer need to compress before the wheel starts to turn. Now when you turn the steering wheel the wheels on the car follow immediately.

On Wednesday night, I got the Bilstein rear shocks. I installed them that night. I put the perch on the higher available setting but did not flip it over. The rear has plenty of travel room but is currently sitting about 1" lower than the front. To alleviate this problem I ordered a set of Fat Four Customs extended top hats. Also when I rebuilt the suspension before somehow I missed ordering the rear top hat bushings . So I innovated and made a set from the front work on the rears. While they are much smaller I was able to get them to compress enough to stay mostly centered and not hit the steel center sleeve anymore. Friday morning I ordered the correct set of bushings to the rear top hats, so all the bushings will be the correct ones soon.

On another front, I started taking parts out of my parts car to start seeing what all I need to gather to be able to finish swapping this car to a manual. I think the only things I still need are, new axles, half shaft, and some shifter cables. Everything else I already have including the conversion mount. So hopefully in the next month and a half she will be a manual car!

I'll get some pictures of progress up tonight.

[marcusv8thunder]

After updating my thread with the pictures of the Innovative traction bar, I installed it the next evening. So now this is done, and although I haven't driven the car with the traction bar, I can tell the steering is so much more responsive now. Now when turning the wheel the radius rod bushing no longer need to compress before the wheel starts to turn. Now when you turn the steering wheel the wheels on the car follow immediately.

This is interesting, im sure my radius rod bushes are tired. Although steering feel is fine I can feel longitudinal movement under braking acceleration. I wonder if a hardrace bush would work enough to help with steering too like you have found installing the traction bar?

[oni_cb7]

This is interesting, im sure my radius rod bushes are tired. Although steering feel is fine I can feel longitudinal movement under braking acceleration. I wonder if a hardrace bush would work enough to help with steering too like you have found installing the traction bar?

Honestly, I bet installing new bushings for the radius rod on both sides would help with steering. It's highly likely that they are 20+ year old rubber.

[Rilas]

I noticed a huge difference even from the feel of my 2 year old Energy Suspension radius rod bushings. Both cars have a greased manual rack. So the steering feel is noticeably different between the sedan and the coupe. So even with newer stiffer bushings you can still notice a difference.

[Rilas]

So some of the pictures I mentioned earlier.

Blown Rear KYB and Nuespeed Race Springs (I forgot the to take a picture of the Bilstein's assembled.)


H22A Intake Manifold Port Matched 1 (So ignore where the prussian blue seems to be away from the edges of the ports. I touched/rubbed/wiped on accident some of it.)


H22A Intake Manifold Port Matched 2


H22A Intake Manifold Port Matched 3 (Here you can see that the runner smoothing goes just past the egr gas holes.)


Innovative Traction Bar Passenger Side


Innovative Traction Bar Driver Side


Innovative Traction Bar Crank Pulley Clearance


Innovative Traction Bar with Center Brace (So after looking at this picture, I noticed a drop of antifreeze on the transmission and the small puddle under it. I went out and looked at the car and found that the upper radiator hose has a small hose in it. So I'll get this replaced sometime this week.)


Innovative Traction Bar Clearance


Innovative Auto to Manual Mount 1


Innovative Auto to Manual Mount 2


I think that's all the pictures I'm lagging behind on currently. If I come across anything else I've forgotten or missed I'll post them up.

[cb9love]

your suspension is looking choice, i am looking forward to your engine build progress.

[Rilas]

So now that I have some time for a bit of an update. Thursday night I got in my FFC extended top hats. The only crappy part about them is they don't have the FFC logo etched into them. This was mentioned on the site when I purchased them, I just forgot about it. I'll get some pictures tomorrow.

I installed them that night, because I needed to take the car on a 100 mile trip for work on Friday morning. So I stayed up till 11:30 getting those installed and some other misc things done on the sedan. So with the FFC top hats I lowered the clip for the spring perch, and also flipped the perch back over to sit correctly. The front and rear look much more evenly matched for height. I haven't measured it yet but I'm going to. Also I'm seriously debating buying a new set of springs. As I got these with my first sedan, which was over 9 years ago. I haven't used them this entire time but they were used when I got them. So I have no clue how old or many miles they have truly seen, or what abuse they have seen. I'm sure the blown shocks for years wasn't all that great for them. I have a feeling all the springs aren't the same height anymore.

Anyway the trip for work was one of the smoothest rides I've had in my car that I can honestly remember. It was so enjoyable. I had one of my co-workers along and he was honestly surprised because I've been telling him all the work that's been going into the suspension lately. The ride home was done at 95 mph (the speed limit is 80 so I wasn't breaking it as bad as you might imagine) the car was smooth the entire time. Granted the sedan has a bit of body roll and is still on taller studded tires. As every time I'm ready to switch it snows again and again... Still and awesome ride to the place and home, I couldn't be happier with the Bilstiens.

So since I've had the car I've been having and issue with the driver's door lock not wanting to fully lock. Basically to lock the car I would have to get out go around and open the passengers door and climb into the car and manually lock the drivers door to ensure that it locked. The auto locks couldn't always force the manual mechanism to lock. So after looking into a few things I finally peeled a bit of the weather cover back and found it was the mechanical lock mechanism. It was totally caked in dirt and other fun things. So I cleaned this all up re-lubricated it and tested it again. I finally have fully functioning door locks!

While working on that I noticed that the lower half of the rear door guide was missing the rubber insert. After cleaning a bunch of stuff out of the bottom of the door I finally found the rubber insert. It was fine other than the fact that it wasn't in the tract. So I fully cleaned it up and re-greased it up with Honda shin-etsu grease and reinstalled it. Holy crap, now when shutting my drivers door there is no more metalic rattle! I still need a new window pin kit but that is so slight in comparison to the noise it used to make. After getting all the rubber re-greased for the drivers door, I figured the same would need to be done for the passenger side. Low and behold I was correct. The only bad part is that the rubber insert is torn on this side. So I'm going to look into ordering a new one and possibly the window pin kits if they are cheap enough. It's been so long since I've looked at the DIY and the price of the kit. It was well before I even owned the coupe. I think I've rambled enough for one evening, I'll get up some pictures of the progress soon.

[Jarrett]

The pin kits are around $20, or so, depending on whether or not the dealer you purchase from discounts from retail.

[Chrisnick]

I need to do the pin kit on my CD7, the window rattle drives me nuts.

[Rilas]

Thanks for the info Jarrett! I looked on Majestic's site and the pin kits are $14.xx each. So really not bad at all for OEM Honda.

I found out I can't order the rubber track for the bottom of the door. I'm going to have to grab one at a junk yard in the next few weeks. I plan on making a quick day trip to Spokane to hit up Pull and Save, to get the last few necessary items that I'm having a hard time tracking down.

Last night I hot glued the covers onto the rear view mirror housing. I actually found another OEM cover for the back side of the mirror. This has caused it to look much nicer, but also has created the need for me to make a new top cover. Thats low on the list for now, so it can stay like it is with the minor gap.

Also last night I figured it was time to finally wrap up the back seat. I spend another 20-30 minutes shaping the seat to fit the Accord body. Once I was happy with the bottom of the seat it was time to address the top half. I drilled all the holes to mount this but never finished it up. So I got out the nutsert tool and got to work. Then did some cleanup and a few other minor things while I had the seat more or less out of the car. Now the only project left with the seats, is wiring up the drivers power, and the heaters to both seats. I'm not sure if that will get done any time soon. I know it will be done before the end of summer though. Most likely when the carpet gets dyed I'll get around to running the wiring that needs to be run underneath of it anyway. I know I'm slacking on the pictures of a few things. But the weather has been crappy and I haven't felt like dragging the camera outside to take some pictures on the sedan. I'm hoping to make it to the Northwest Accord/Prelude meet this year. So I have a deadline to wrap up a ton of odds and ends projects and get it converted to manual. I wish I could get the H22A1 finished up by then and have it in the car, but financially it just won't happen. I still have too many expensive parts to still buy for the engine. Not only that I'm doing a bunch more maintenance on the Pilot again for the gf before she drives it to Salt Lake City, UT at the end of the month. Only another $500-600 into the Pilot (Oh well, almost all of the maintenance that has needed to be done on this is now done. It had a pretty big laundry list the more I have looked it over, while working on it.) I will get some pictures of what has been done lately. Early next week I'm going to look into the cost of the title, registration and insurance. Which means all the suspension stuff on the sedan needs to get swapped over. As well as the exhaust and some other random things.

[Rilas]

So after life got a bit crazy for a few weeks. I'll post a bit of an update.

I've been working on my PLM H22 4-2-1 header that I have an F series flange on. It was originally a 4 piece slip joint design. Well 2 winters ago I was still running it, and the car slid down into the ice ruts and hit the header. This did 2 things, first it marginally dented one of the 2 pipes in the down pipe, the second is that is shifted the whole header back a bit. This also loosened up about half the slip joints to the point where unless moving at a decent speed you could always smell exhaust. Well the header is officially one piece. I've welded it all together and ground down the welds to make the pipes smooth. I decided that it was finally time to put in the work on it since I would not have the H22A1 finished in time for the Northwest Accord/Prelude at the end of May. I finally wrapped this up last night. I've been working on it here and there for the past 2 weeks as I've had time. I'll have some pictures of this later today once it's all bolted in, later tonight.

I have been working on accumulating all of the parts to swap Lola to a manual. So I bought a new clutch master cylinder, slave cylinder, drivers side CV axle, and a DX/LX rear motor mount. With the swap in mind I've been planning to make a junk yard run. I did that on Saturday to get all the odd misc items I was still missing. I managed to get all the hard lines/soft lines, half shaft with 0 play in the bearing, DX/LX rear T bracket, starter/tranmission long bolt, clutch fluid reservoir, neutral safety switch and plug (just in case mine is bad). Also I managed to score a wagon utility cover for the back end. Has the vinyl cover and the net if the seats are folded down. So what really pissed me off, is that every manual 90-97 Accord and the 97 and 98 CL that were manual all had their shifter cables missing. So I need to buy a set, and the cheapest it seems they come is about $100. So that totally blows. I'm going to get in touch with someone here to see if they have a set but I doubt it. Next bet is our super shitty junk yards in town. If that all fails then I'm going with eBay.

The maintenance on the Pilot and some other things has just been killing me lately. But I have also managed to get the hood hinge covers glued onto the cowl, so thats one more item off the list. As well as some other small maintenance items on Lola. I did wash the drivers side floor mat as well. Looks almost brand new. I'll have to get some pictures.

As far as my promised pictures from what I've missed in my last few updates, well it's going to have to wait a bit more. As I didn't have time to get the pictures off the camera before the gf took it to Salt Lake City with her. So I'll get what pictures I can and what not with the cell phone, and get at least something uploaded. Tonight Lola is going under the knife for the auto to manual conversion. Hopefully by the weekend everything will be in place except for the shifter cables. I have to wait till Friday/payday to get them taken care of. So during the next few weeks I should have a whole slew of updates. As I'm also planning on getting the registration done on Friday or Monday. Once the swap is complete I need to put some serious miles on her to make sure she is ready for the trip to Washington at the end of May.

[Darkcloud]

Nice build so far

How do you like the dohc f22b