hey i saw your crx but i was wondering if you had to shave the fenders to fit the rear tires or it you had to do it to the front???
Nope. But when I went from the 14 inch rims, which is what is shown in that tech article, to my current 16 inch rims, the tires do come very close to the fender lip when I drop it down near the 3 inch mark (which only gets dropped that low when I'm taking part in meets and cruises... for show basically...) otherwise I set it to where it's about 1.5 inches from stock. Still gives it a nice stance, ride quality is very close to stock (as many people have commented...) and I still don't have too much fender gap at that height.
also do you have a front and a rear strut bar???
Just up front. I have had plans to install a lower rear shock brace... Just never got around to it...
how long did it take you??
If you're talking about the coil over kit installation, about an hour by myself without the aid of an air compressor.
This is because the previous owner had cut the stock springs in order to lower the car. Because he did this, there wasn't much pressure/tension on the springs so compressing the spring with my spring compressor took hardly any time at all and I could do it easily with a socket and ratchet.
If you still have the stock springs, the compressing of the springs is where it will take you the longest, IMHO.
My younger brother got the Skunk-2 kit for his 2000 Civic last year and it took him about 15-20 minutes to do each spring using a socket and ratchet. He only did two before saying "The hell with this! Let's go to Dad's and use his air ratchet!"... :^)
The question I get asked the most is the compressing of the springs. My suggestions are as follows:
DEFINITELY USE ONE!
(1) If you have to buy or rent one, be sure to get one that fits the smaller springs used on the Honda's. Also make sure that it has safety hooks. I bought mine from Sears 5+ years ago for around $50 (USD). You can rent them for about that (or less...).
(2) Talk to a local shoppe that does suspension work and see how much they would charge you if you brought them your springs and shocks. It should not take them more than an hour to disassemble all four of them. Some will even go as far as to re-assemble them for you. But, IMHO, this is not that hard to do.
If you already have lowered springs (cut or not...) then chances are you won't need a spring compressor. You typically don't need to compress the springs to assemble the kit because the springs are usually lowered already. In fact, when you go to put it together, the thing will look loose and clumsy and you'll wonder if you assembled it correctly. This is usually the result of setting the perches at it's lowest setting and so the spring sort of flops around until the shock is compressed by the weight of the car. This is perhaps the second most often question/concern I get asked. :^)
And last, take the car down to the alignment shoppe as soon as you can to have it checked. Set it to the lowest setting (one that allows you to drive without any interference from the tires...) and have them do a check.
Don't freak out if they say that the camber is off the scale ... some shoppes can only measure between -1.5 degrees and +1.5 degrees of camber. Some can measure from -3 to +3 degrees. It depends on the shoppe and the tools they currently have.
A camber kit will most likely be needed if you plan to run below the 2 inch mark for any length of time. Which is yet another reason I set mine for 1.5 inches. At that height, my camber is about -0.5. I purchased a camber kit about 2 years ago and have yet to install it (general laziness mostly...). I got the Ingalls kit whch was highly recommended at the time and it was the only kit that I could get that would give me the very wide range of -3 to +3 camber adjustment. I think the other kits now allow for that and are not as expensive.
Now, if you're talking about the shock braces, the front took less than 30 minutes. I've done lower shock brace installations before and it takes about the same amount of time.
i got an 88 crx and i just got coilovers but i dont know if it is going to fit with my wheels. the tires that i got are low profile but they still stick out about a 1/4 of an inch.
Sounds like an offset problem with the rims.
Basically offset is the distance (in millimeters...) from the mounting pad of the wheel (where it touches the hub of your car...) to the true centerline of the wheel. If you have a wheel with a +40 offset, it means the mounting pad is 40 mm in front (towards the outside of the car...) of the true centerline of the wheel.
For some reason, the stock offset for the Second Gen CRX escapes me... But I seem to recall it being somewhere between 35mm and 40mm. The rims that I currently have on my 1990 CRXsi is a 40mm offset.
please email me back if you can help me!!
one more thing do you know if the wheels and the tires bow in ward??
thanks
jamez
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You're referring to negative camber and it will "bow in" depending on how low you go and if you don't run any sort of camber kit.
There are other ways to combat negative camber besides using a camber kit and still keep a low ride. Two pop to mind:
(1) Adjustable shock mounts. I've seen these on a few Accords and Civic's in my home town. Basically it replaces the lower damper-shock mount/fork. I've seen these used on mini-trucks and even 4x4 (in fact, I think they're really meant/designed for off-road use...). It acts very much like a "dropped" or "lowered" spindle does. The camber is not really effected and you still retain your stock ride (I lowered my '61 VW Bug this way... I was able to keep the stock shocks for a nice smooth ride and still have a 2.5 inch drop up front...). I don't know the cost (can't be all that much...).
(2) Install an air-bag suspension system. It will cost you a heck of a lot more.
Some other creative(?) ways I've seen performed included bending the rear control arms to correct the negative camber and ovaling the shock bolt holes to allow for the camber adjustments. In some cars, this is how you adjust the camber. I don't really recommend doing either. But I thought I would at least mention them.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions.
CRX Owners Group President (http://www.crx.org/southcal)
1990 Honda CRXsi (http://drive.to/jiggy)
ICQ # 3714283 (nickname: godzilla)
Mount Laguna Cruise (San Diego County) - September 2, 2002
http://www.crx.org/southcal/events.html
To see who all is coming: http://www.crx.org/southcal/rsvp.html
