My SUPER Dumped Civic

WHY?
I was planning on cutting my bumpstops to get more suspension travel with the shorter springs (at the expense of harder bottoming) and had three concerns. #1) was bottoming the shock (tokicos),
#2) was bottoming the suspension. The top of the control arm will hit the shock tower. I've seen the dents from this on 5th Gen civics with no bumpstops and recieved this story:
about a year ago, my neighbor bought a 93 CX w/ plans to do a swap in it. he wanted his car to be really low, and it was. it was so low that the front after market air dam was about 1/2 inch from the ground and i couldnt fit my shoe underneath the side. about 6 months ago, i noticed he got a 2nd gen integra. when i asked about the CX, it turned out he rode it w/o springs for about 4 months an destroyed the car.
The sheet metal shock towers on one side separated from the rest of the frame, so you could actually see the tire from the engine bay, this made the windshield crack and the door got stiff, not to mention the car leaned to the right. he had someone steal the car from his driveway eventually, and got his integra. so i guess this could be another reason you can tell people not to go too low.

that was the stupidest man on the planet!

#3) was the tire denting the fender when hitting a bump in a corner.

What did I learn. 1/3 bump stop is too little, but just barely. 1/2 bumpstop is the farthest I'd suggest. And that's only if you have stock diameter tires. (e.g.: 175/70/13, 185/60/14, 195/50/15, or 205/40/16). Taller tires will hit the body around tight corners pratically regardless of offset. The limit of how low you can go is the fender clearance when you turn the tires, not the suspension travel.

What about bottoming the shock? How many people do you know with dumped cars and blown tokicos? I don't know any. I'm pretty sure its not going to blow out even with no bumpstop. But don't quote me.

Keep in mind that these are 14" wheels, not 15s. This car is sitting on 1/3 bumpstop and NO springs. Notice how the rear is lower than the front by just a little. Maybe it made sense to Honda, but it doesn't make sense to me. The weight is in the front, so shouldn't it have more travel than the rear?

You can't really see it on this picture, but the mud flaps are not only touching the ground, they are folding over somewhat. When I rolled the car down to here, it bumped and bounced like crazy. I could never drive it like this one the street.






Check out how little daylight is under the car. Serious ground clearance problems here. FEAR EVERY SPEEDBUMP. I wanted to try it on the street just for fun, but I couldn't even get it out of the driveway, unless I removed my exhaust.











Look closely. The tire is touching the fender. What you can't see is that the turning the wheel actually forced the car to rise up 1/4 to 1/2 and inch! ArrGGHH!! Damn e-mail keeps fucking up my images!!
You can see it better here. See the fender well plastic being pushed out of place!


Now here you can see the bending mud flap! I'd love to see what these looked like after a couple months of scrapping.













Check out the negative camber! Those tire wouldn't last long on the street, but it'd be sweet on the track... except for the lack of suspension travel. The rear is more negative than the rear, which isn't that surprising since it has more travel than the front.










Have you seen civics on the street that were this low? I bet they were bouncing like crazy even on the almost smooth stuff. Well, now you know why.

Contrary to street opinion, you need some suspension travel for good handling. If your cranked over in a corner and a bump causes the suspension to fully compress, bad shit will happen. When you've only got half an inch travel on cut springs, you will bottom. DON'T DO IT!

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31 July, 1996