By Don (209.181.52.76) on Thursday, March 29, 2001 - 06:42 pm:

Hi, friends
My car will be back from the chassis builder by next week and I want to start the disassembly and redo the suspension and brakes. I want to update the suspension to spherical bearings and I think this is now legal in IT because the GCR states bushing material as unrestricted. I know I could go down to the bearing supply house and look through their catalogs until I found the Hi-misalignment bearings that matched my requirements. They say there is no substitute for experience, so has any one in Civic land done this before and have some tips and #’s handy? I have the 73 control arms, anyone have a source for ball joints?

I’m also worried with the 2” drop about the suspension geometry . I have been reading some advise from IT racers on different discussion boards (no Honda guys) and they warn of dropping a strut car too much as it messes up the roll centers and creates problems with bump steer. Because of rules you cannot relocate the suspension pivot points to correct these problems (although I have corrected minor bump problems on other makes by bending the steering arms on the hubs). So you end up loosing way more than you gained by lowering the last 1/2”. I am planning on checking all of this but again is there anybody that could give me a heads up?

My car came with a strange oil pan its not a original EB3 pan that matches the others I have, it has a flat bottom and maybe slightly deeper. I suspect its a EN pan from the 1300 that you friends up in Canada got since its almost the same engine from what I read. Am I right? A receipt from A/T engineering says its a deep sump pan, but I know It looks too factory to be anything special. I want a spare for another engine. Anyone have one for sale? Is a oil pump / pickup swap with the same 1300 required?

By Charles R. (64.170.157.201) on Thursday, March 29, 2001 - 11:35 pm:

Check your GCR for a rule that limits the "metal content" of your bushings. I think, unless they changed it in the last few years, you can't have a bushing that has more metal content than the original. Hmmm, a delrin spherical bearing? Don't think it hasn't been thought of before.
Bump steer does get pretty ugly when it's that low, mine sways side to side on long sweepers.
Just run it higher, with a little softer spring. You'll have more grip that way anyhow.

By Anthony Stewart (210.50.30.3) on Friday, March 30, 2001 - 02:03 am:

New lower Arm's avail here in Australia very cheap,not sure bout 73 ones though but can get later 77 ones.I have custom made camber plates for the fron with spherical bearing.I can scan a photo but will take a week to gwt the photo scanned and back to me on disc but if you can wait and let me know I will get the pic's done.Let me know if you want the pic's

By Don (209.181.52.29) on Friday, March 30, 2001 - 06:38 am:

Charles R., I have the 2001 GCR right here, must have changed it.
Anthony, I already have the bearing in the front camber plates. Its the other pivot points and the rear strut mount I want to redo.
New lower arms, if they are available from some one besides Honda at $90 each would be interesting, I may just have to get them from Big H.
Anyone have anymore bearing info to add? Looks like I will be putting a few turns in the coilovers. Thanks guys!

http://www.rvi.net/~dforeman/picture.html
This has some "before" pictures of the car and camber plates. I had to have allot of bracing put it to sure up the back of the front plates. I wouldn't build a car like this but since the tower was mostly cut away. I didn't have much choice, Its better now.

By Charles R. (64.170.157.234) on Friday, March 30, 2001 - 11:55 pm:

Check the yellow pages first and if that fails go to any Farm or heavy equipment repair/supply shop. The trucking parts supply places will have this info too. Ask them where to purchase bearings. The place down here used to be King Bearing. They've been bought out, but the same warehouse is still the place to go. In Medford Oregon, there was a place on Crater Lake Hwy., Northern or Northwestern Bearing I think. I'm sure there are places like this in every town, you just have to sniff them out. It's the guys that do a lot of heavy machinery work that know where to go.

By Don (209.181.52.20) on Saturday, March 31, 2001 - 01:48 am:

Thanks Charles, the place is now called Applied Industrial Technology. How do you know about Medford? I live in Central Point, thats about two seconds away from Medford.

By Tim Harding (Timh) (147.222.140.130) on Saturday, March 31, 2001 - 11:15 am:

If you don't mind buying them online it's pretty easy. I've been looking into spherical bearings recently and a quick internet search lead me to half a dozen companied in a couple minutes. Check out: http://www.bakerprecision.com/
If you dig around you'll find the bearings along with specs for each. They have spherical bearings in a wide range sizes and prices. They're only a credit card number away...

By Charles R. (64.170.157.231) on Sunday, April 01, 2001 - 12:34 am:

I lived in Medford for a couple years, until I escaped.
Seriously, I lived up there until a year or so ago. I'd still be up there if it were not for an "incident" with a certain Mr. Steve Curry of the Medford cruise association and his biggoted views.
It's a sore spot.
Did you know that there are a few N600's up there? My friend Andy owns one. There are two more right off Table Rock, north of Vilas. Those two were for sale, one has a bad engine though.

By Don (209.181.52.16) on Sunday, April 01, 2001 - 07:24 am:

What a trip, I worked for that guy thru college as his lot-monkey at Heritage Motors! Worst treatment, most verbal abuse I ever got, basic training was more fun. The cruise is nothing more than a big advertisement for the lot. When I had my Mustang we use to do are own "cruizing" on some deserted roads out past the airport. Ooops, I can hear the cops coming to get me. I stoped doing that though, as one night I over estimated the traction and turned my car sideways almost taking out the other car & people were hanging around for to many races attracting attention. The street races on cruise night at the dragstrip are cool though.

There was a neet little 1st gen with Madness Motorsports stickers on it at the drags a few years back, was that you??
One of the 600's around here got bought up buy a guy who used to work at Heritage but now works at "The Carlot". I checked to see if it was for sale as Eric from the sb1 site wants one. No luck!

Small world! I guess I'm glad we live so far apart now more parts for me Ha-ha! Seriously these Civics are so plentiful more than enough to go around.

By John S. (207.160.161.180) on Sunday, April 01, 2001 - 02:10 pm:

Don,
I can hardly wait to see the scan closeups of those camberplates...would like even better to see blueprints with dimensions though...

By Don (209.181.52.25) on Sunday, April 01, 2001 - 04:22 pm:

John, The car came with lots of blueprints for wheel spacers, carb plenum/adapter etc. unfortunately the camber plate plans are not in them. Like I posted before don't copy these as I had to have Performance Fabrication do a lot of bracing (now legal in IT) to support the back of the plate, after about thirty races it had literally started to rip the front of the shock tower off. I have a feeling the plate was acting like a spring rather than the stiff coilovers. The positive part of the design is that its mounted above the tower giving you an extra 1/2" or so travel with the lowered suspension. The black anodized piece and the bearing mount were purchased I will have to dig up the receipt with the company on it, if you want.
I would make up the base plate to be a little more conservative on the caster and not cut away the back of the tower eliminating the weak spot.

If your rules allow, make a stationary non adjustable plate on the top and fine tune with adjustable lower control arm as this would have less chance of sliping out of adjustment under competition conditions.
Racecraft mentioned this type of setup on their web page, may be some info is availible there.

By Charles R. (64.170.157.144) on Monday, April 02, 2001 - 12:35 am:

Yep. That was me. Here's a pic before the paint and stickers.

The incident was about me and Augie(Madness's president) attending the "Medford Cruise Night at the Drags" with our "Jap Crap". It went downhill quite fast from there. It's amazing to me that, although everyone knows he's an ass, they still all bow to his will. He does pull some heavy strings in the legal system though, I'll give him that. Of course, the thing that really torques me, afterwards one of the sponsors used the footage of Augie and I to promote the damn event on TV!
Like I said, sore spot.
I'll try to get ahold of Andy and see if he wants to sell. Check out the two off Table Rock, I just can't remember the name of the road. It runs parallel to T.R. on the east side. It starts at E.gregory and goes north two blocks. The guys' house is on the west side near the north end of the mystery road (Pine-something?). If they're still there, you can even see one of them in the guys' back yard from T.R.

If you're still having carb problems (was that you?) Contact Norm's Honda and Acura service down in Talent. He's a great guy who's been working on these things since the 600's were new (got 90hp from those two cylinders). He's been autocrossing for quite some time as well.

By Charles R. (64.170.157.144) on Monday, April 02, 2001 - 12:38 am:

Yep. That was me. Here's a pic before the paint and stickers.

The incident was about me and Augie(Madness's president) attending the "Medford Cruise Night at the Drags" with our "Jap Crap". It went downhill quite fast from there. It's amazing to me that, although everyone knows he's an ass, they still all bow to his will. He does pull some heavy strings in the legal system though, I'll give him that. Of course, the thing that really torques me, afterwards one of the sponsors used the footage of Augie and I to promote the damn event on TV!
Like I said, sore spot.
I'll try to get ahold of Andy and see if he wants to sell. Check out the two off Table Rock, I just can't remember the name of the road. It runs parallel to T.R. on the east side. It starts at E.gregory and goes north two blocks. The guys' house is on the west side near the north end of the mystery road (Pine-something?). If they're still there, you can even see one of them in the guys' back yard from T.R.

If you're still having carb problems (was that you?) Contact Norm's Honda and Acura service down in Talent. He's a great guy who's been working on these things since the 600's were new (got 90hp from those two cylinders). He's been autocrossing for quite some time as well.

By Don (209.181.52.79) on Monday, April 02, 2001 - 07:02 am:

Nope don't have carb problems, I have a Weber 34 DATR on my car, works good. In fact I have an extra Weber side draft set up that Richard Nasr sold me that I cant use in ITD.

I guess your moving was the reason I haven't seen that cool Civic around anymore Ha-Ha

Just for the record I was there that night and all I heard was people talking about that Honda.

I don't remember what time you turned but I can bet the reason Steve Curry was throwing one of his tantrums was that you were coming too close to smoking his 14.8 second $65,000 Boss 429 Mustang.
I like early Fords, but that car is plain embarrassing.

I don't think madness is in business any more?

By david (208.130.245.167) on Monday, April 02, 2001 - 07:41 am:

charles r., you are probably refering to me with the carb problems. i live in portland which is about 250 miles from medford. i'm going down there later this month to get a new dizzy from don and have it recurved. hopefully i'll get those carb problems fixed by then or i'm not risking going down. i'm still dealing with vacumn and throttle return problems.

By Anonymous (209.181.52.96) on Thursday, May 03, 2001 - 09:10 pm:

This is Don
Not having a problem finding Spherical bearings, the parts I an having trouble finding sources for are the sleeves. Both the ones to slide into the out side. and the ones that widen the bearing shaft
Any tips on getting the old bushings out. I tried an air hammer with different tips, the last stubborn bushing I remove took a torch to busn out the rubber and the I was able to split the sleeve with an air hammer. Looking for an alterative.

By Don (209.181.52.96) on Thursday, May 03, 2001 - 09:33 pm:

Look under the "Server Error" thread. for a picture of what I'm look ing for. Still can't post the picture on this thread.