Ground control and Koni yellow rear to high

natetattoo

So I did my research went with ground control sleeves and Koni yellow sports for 89-91 civic .installed every thing and with the spring.collar on bottom setting the front coil sleeve is maxed out and the height is to my liking. The rear on the other hand is maxed out all the way down and there is about a two finger gap. I'm running 195 /50-15's . My question is how are these guys getting so low with ground controls and konis ?

bkmc24

Does it have the snap ring thing on the strut itself to lower it more? I know mine for my hatch do, maybe try that?

natetattoo

Just figured it out! I had asked the guys I got my extended tophats from ,if the bump stops or preshortened,they said yes that wasn't the case.
The car was so low it was riding on the bump stops ,inhibiting it from getting any lower . I cut the bump stops down and the car is sitting good now! Thinking I'm gonna need to raise the collars though so I'll actually be using the shock.

natetattoo

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natetattoo

So i thought I figured out but still don't have enough shock travel. Here's what I have going on.
recently purchased ground countrol sleeves and spring for da ,ef set up also purchased Koni sports for ef ,for my 88 civic wagon and extended top hats .
I have done a lot of research on how to lower and keep a decent ride for the wagon with alot of misleading info.
There is a thread that says da springs for wagon since the wagon is heavier so I got the gc sleeve and spring kit for da but in the instructions in the box says da and ef , so the spring rates are the same for the two ?
i also read another post saying da springs to raise your wagon.
also purchased Koni sports wich the fronts seem to be ok as far as a lowered ride height but ended up sitting on the bump stops, wich I took back out cut the stops and reinstalled and now it's bottoming out hard !
On the rear I installed the gc's and yellows with 2" extended top hats with the sping Pearch normal on the shock and spring Pearch all the way down and the rear was like stock super high .i took it back apart and had to flip the sleeves upside down and flip the spring Pearch upside down on the shocks only to still have a two finger gap between tire and fender well and I'm sitting on the bump stops . So took them back out cut the bump stops and I have a little more travel but not enough.I am also running extended top hats ,and have the collar on the shocks set at the lowest setting.
I've seen 88-91 civic wagons that say they are running this exact same set up gc Koni sports and extended top hats , and they are much lower than my wagon . Such as the road less traveled wagon .i would imagine that car is not riding like crap for as much time and money was put into it .
so what am I missing here?
I just ordered 2" drop forks for the front to gain some more travel on the shocks and plan on extending my stock rear top hats to 3" wich sucks because I got after market top hats for the rear wich I'll be taking out , also one of the new front Koni sports adjusters was stuck and had to spend another 120$ on s new shock not to mention when i contacted Koni about the problem the rep told me " What do you want a magic tool " wich I thought was pretty lame after spending the money , and asking a opinion on their product! So what am I missing here ? Thanks for your replies in advance .

jpciii

Ground Control's "off the shelf" kits for DA and EF have different part numbers. I suspect their DA springs are longer in the rear than Civic ones. (The fact that the included instructions listed both cars is basically meaningless. All that means is they didn't have to pay a technical writer do produce 2 separate documents because one worked for both chassis.) I did a little digging and found a random post from honda-tech in 2003: ""I called Ground Control and talked to a tech and he said that it is not wise to put 90-93 Integra coilovers in a 92-95 civic hatch because they will not lower the car enough.""

It's good that you did some research, but I think you got bad info. Every time I see DA springs on a wagon, it ends up being lifted... or stock ride height with DA lowering springs. I have personal experience using DC Ground Controls on my wagon and then on my CRX. I'm fairly certain that ground control supplies the same length springs for DC and EF,EG,EK, just different rates.

If you want to research whether or not your DA rears are longer than Civic, there are numbers printed on the springs... one of the 3 numbers is the length (along with diameter and rate)

greenteagod

^ to what jcpiii said. I have DA springs on my wagon, specifically because I wanted it to ride high.

Granted I'm not using coil overs, it's on Bilsteins. But yeah if you were to use those on coil overs you'd pretty much have to bottom out the coilover to accomplish anything. Which would not be good.

natetattoo

Thahis for the response guys ! I agree there is a lot of misleading info here! So I called ground control and talked to Dustin , cool guy with the info I needed. He said that the difference in da ef springs aren't that big of a difference but did say if you are using Koni sports yellows that their is a specific sleeve they sell intended for those shocks , and the limited edition kit you see is intended for stock shocks .the Koni yellow specific sleeve would actually work with their o rings so you don't end up using electrical tape as you see people often do . Also you often see people flip the ground control sleeves upside down to gain more drop the Koni speciffic sleeves are different and you wouldn't have to do this and last the Koni specific sleeves unable a you to not use the the spring Pearch wich the limited edition sets adjustment collars would bind on and you wouldn't have to flip them over .

Tonygtime

natetattoo wrote: »

Thahis for the response guys ! I agree there is a lot of misleading info here! So I called ground control and talked to Dustin , cool guy with the info I needed. He said that the difference in da ef springs aren't that big of a difference but did say if you are using Koni sports yellows that their is a specific sleeve they sell intended for those shocks , and the limited edition kit you see is intended for stock shocks .the Koni yellow specific sleeve would actually work with their o rings so you don't end up using electrical tape as you see people often do . Also you often see people flip the ground control sleeves upside down to gain more drop the Koni speciffic sleeves are different and you wouldn't have to do this and last the Koni specific sleeves unable a you to not use the the spring Pearch wich the limited edition sets adjustment collars would bind on and you wouldn't have to flip them over .

I got the same issue as you in the rear. Just ordered a full kit from ground control and told them I have a wagon . Kit came built. How did you resolve the issue?

Also, do you have camber kit in front?