Got the other LCA and strut/spring setup in. Took plenty of pictures along the way so expect a writeup tomorrow or the next day. It'll also cover bushing replacement in the rear trailing arm. Hope someone else posts before then otherwise it might be three posts in a row from me oh lawdy!
I was telling Killa, those drums I got on the wholesale closeout. Looks like they were used and they were passing them off as used. Already at 201+ MM. Jackholes. I had em just turn them true since they were out of round even though it's over spec. I'll be getting some fresh ones on there in a few weeks anyway. Still pissed though.
Also picked up some metal to make some shims for the rear sway. Gotta drop it down at least an inch to be able to get it in good alignment using my current end links. I could get longer ones, but I'm not too bothered about that at the moment.
Also had to zip up a chunk of the exhaust with the welder today. Where they had put this 2.5" to 2" reducer it had cracked across the top at the taper. So bandaid that sucker with the flux welder since I don't have my garage wired up for the big welder yet.
Header is on backorder, so hopefully they can manage to get that in stock sometime soon so I can work on doing the rest of the exhaust and get this nasty annoying raspy crap off of there. Sounds like a nest of bees in a coffee can.
It's over at Firestone getting aligned. Lifetime for 169 Internet quote special. Yeah!
Booooooooooo!
They wouldn't align it. said the control arms up front need done. They wanted $500 to do that. I have bushings for it myself already. So I'll do that and take it on back.
Wish they had told me that before I waited two hours.
Header is in OKC getting all coated up. Should be interesting to see when it arrives. Wish I'd had it here first to snap some pics for some before and after. Now I just need to get the wiring in the garage sorted so I can actually weld some on the exhaust itself. Well that and get some more money so I can buy the rest of the exhaust components.
Front suspension done. Just showing how it sits. I like it. Perfect ride height for my tastes. You should have heard it when I got the front springs seated. Drove it down a road I knew had a big dip and BAM! Some heavy side to side swerves wasn't getting it done.
Yikes why did the springs do that!? Should be seated upon assembly! Ive installed many many sets of springs and never had them suddenly bang into place whilst driving
I think it's the beefiness of the bilstein seat. The rear springs had a little more play to em and with the car lowered the socketed in. The fronts the bottom most coil on the H&R OE springs is just a bit tight on that mount and it took a little bouncy bouncy to get it in place. It's all good now, it was a bit startling though.
Oh right, Yea I have Bilstein in my CR-V, they are a bit more solid that OEM but the lifted springs I have in there have so much preload that they seated themselves well and truely
Yeah I think the bottom of the spring was sitting just right on the little base for it that it needed to spin just a bit more to get seated just right. Either way, one more to go. The biggest pain in the ass so far has just been pressing the bushings out of the old upper control arm since all I have is a vice, and not a very big one at that. If my funds weren't already spoken for I'd just go pick up a 20 ton press from the local harbor freight and be done with it. Oh well.
This thing is driving damn near like a new car now, even with needing to do one more strut and spring ;-)
The rail road tracks by my house that would damn near jar the fillings out of your teeth are very tame now. Either way I'll stop rambling and save the rest for my writeup of doing the front suspension. Weather permitting, I'll be on that tomorrow.
Small update, had to do a caliper rebuild today. Noticed some fluid on the passenger caliper, sure enough it was seeping. Picked up a caliper rebuild from the local oreilly auto for less than $5
They had two other rebuild kits there that I looked at at first, it seems they were meant for much bigger pistons. I didn't realize there was a variety available for the civic. Anyone else know about this?
Either way, quick rebuild took less than 20 minutes to pop it apart rebuild it and then rebleed the system. Word of advice, put the dust boot on the piston and then press everything in place. Putting the dust boot on first just made things a major pain.
But yeah, at this price and simplicity. If you're doing anything with your brakes and you don't know the last time the calipers were rebuilt. I'd recommend rebuilding them.
Got my header back today. It's looking pretty nice.
Only 2" at the final exit so not expecting anything monstrous, but my current exhaust is a turd and figured might as well do it up. worst case when I go to upgrade I'll have a full 2" exhaust to sell =D
It does look snazzy, in my opinion, with the fresh coat on it. Should hopefully see some reduction in engine bay temps as well. Pair this off with a new radiator and fan/shroud setup and it'll be rock and roll for sure.
Gonna have to bust out the flap wheel to tidy up a few parts though. But that's to be expected with inexpensive headers.
All right, getting everything ready to weld up. Gonna try to pick up a bottle of 75/25 tomorrow and drop a 240v line to get this stuff sorted. Already have the breaker box pulled into the garage now so I'm pretty much good to go.
I also cleaned up the inside of the header for the most part, maybe a little more work but overall killed that excess metal in there. Just waiting on a couple 180 & 45 bends to come in to have all the parts to do the rear bendy bits to connect to the muffler.
Here's all the stuff I have so far though. Thrush Turbo Muffler, Thrush Glasspack, the 4-2-1 header. New "cat" and a good bit of stainless flex pipe. I know I'm not doing stainless welds, but I'm not too terribly worried about it. The flex was only $18 and I want to get my welding skills up a bit more before I switch over to doing full stainless. I figure I can get this one together though and it'll last me a good long while. Here in Texas, rust isn't too much of a concern anyway, and I'll probably be doing some exhaust paint on most of the stuff anyway.
Also have a couple V band flanges there and not shown 7ish feet of straight tube, and some hangers. Can't find an exhaust tip I like. Might just run it as tube and call it good enough. With luck and time though I should be able to get this in place in a couple weekends. Then good bye shit sounding, no flex, leaky "new" exhaust. Seriously...
All right, got a quick line dropped and picked up the gas cylinder today. Started doing the first flange with some tacks. I've never welded nicer tacks.
Cranked the voltage up to get some flatter welds and welded on the first V band flange as well.
The real test will come when I go to do the butt welds on the bendy bits at the back. Still waiting on those pieces to arrive though.
Setting up the other side of the flange here. I've come across a few forums where people use V band clamps/flanges and get less than optimal results. You can always use a dab of RTV in there as needed, but I came across a page where another guy set them up like this. I think some people want to just have them flush to the end and weld them as such. But if you have one done where the pipe is set back from the face of the flange and then have the next pipe inline sticking out past the flange it lets you get them perfectly aligned.
There is the tendency in these flanges to not want to mate up perfectly if they're not aligned when you clamp. This eliminates that and all you have to do is fit them together and then clamp. It'll be cleanly aligned. Though that's said in theory, I'll of course update when it's done and see if I have any leaks out of the box.
Lol, the banging happens to me all the time with the shorter rear springs.
Whenever I drive up a speedbump the rear wheel lifts from the ground an in 2 out of 3 cases the spring needs to settle again.
Thanks! With luck I'll be able to get the exhaust sorted in 1-2 weeks. The bendy bits are arriving this week. Then just a matter of cutting them and stitching them together. I'll probably practice a couple butt welds to get the settings on the welder right.
O.k. somewhat of an actual writeup here instead of just a random post so I'll use my write up font as it's easier for me to read
So here it is side by side with the old setup.
My only complaint here is that the old one did tuck up under there a bit better. It is a smaller system though, I can work with it.
Crammed it in there. It's a little tight, I need to try to readjust the radiator a bit right now it's hitting the fan housing just barely. Might tweak that a bit.
It comes through nicely though. No really clearance issues right here.
Hanger for the old pipe. I removed it entirely since it was a separate piece. Along with another unused hanger at the rear that was hitting where I was routing the exhaust.
Here you can see it hanging down.
Hanger ended up sitting right on top of the resonator. No real bother to me though it was only a $40 resonator.
Welding up the rear muffler section.
Low hanging fruit. I am fixing this ASAP. I need to weld in a new hanger up there in the tunnel and raise this up. The length of flex pipe I got is allowing for a good bit of sag. I can raise this probably 2 if not 3 inches before I run into any interference. Apologies for the blurry pics it was around 1am when I was taking these and the phone camera doesn't behave well then. I'll get out there with the iPad shortly and take some better shots.
Muffler on. Yay!
All right, next day in. nabbed another rubber hanger and welded up a rod onto the cat to get some ground clearance back. Sorting out that low hanging fruit mentioned before.
Fortunately the rods I ordered were plenty long so I was able to put them at strange angles to get the effect I needed. There was no hanger mount this far forward since the new header doesn't bolt up to the bottom of the engine like the old one does. Also since this was sagging due to the length of the flex pipe that wouldn't do me any good anyway. So I took a hanger off the rear that was no longer in use and was actually interfering with the new pipe and welded it onto the car itself.
With that done the only thing left, besides minor fiddling is the tail pipe. I was unable to find an exhaust tip I liked, and DrFink said he was a fan of a simple turn down, so I figured the hell with it, why not. I have some extra bends laying around anyway so I cut myself a little turn down.
Tacked it on to the rest of the tail pipe scavenged from the other part of the bend, that I also put a V band on, because why not V bands are awesome! And that also lets me position the tail pipe as I see fit.
Up Periscope!
Some things that need sorted, the header comes in slight contact with the fan housing. I'll need to deal with that. I'm thinking I might wrap it as well because things are still getting a bit warm under there. A shame to hide my lovely black jet-hot pipes, but if I can drop engine bay temps even further, well then that will please me just fine. Then just some cleaning here and there. Since it's mostly all modular I may disassemble the entire thing and paint it with some exhaust paint. Undecided on that though. I'll definitely get some more pics of the setup though. Probably take all the modular bits out and take good pictures of them laid out. Save for the flexpipe/cat assembly as that's gasketed on to the header so I don't want to screw with that since it's one of those funky graphite gaskets.
A couple people have asked about the sound, and I definitely need to get a sound clip. My phone wasn't having it though, it would up the recording volume when there wasn't sound, then when I'd rev the engine it would start clipping. I'll see if the iPad does any better, if not might have to bust out the proper camera on it with a better mic. The tone is definitely deeper, but it's actually quieter, which is what I was going for. Granted my basis for comparison was the shit old exhaust that had a leak at every weld seam due to them having the entire thing solid with no flex points. So it sounded like a swarm of bees inside a coffee can. It's got a bit more volume up til about 2200 rpm then it quiets on down. So while I did pay for the header and getting it coated just for experimentation sake, the rest of the exhaust was cheap and sounds great in my opinion. Thrush 30" glass pack as a resonator in the middle, followed up by a Thrush Turbo muffler. Both parts I think were under $40 each. Then probably 4ish feet of straight tube. Various bits from two 45 & 180 bends, another thanks to DrFink for the suggestion on that. A cat and a length of flex line from siliconeintakes.com the flex was I think maybe $18. Then the V band clamps and flanges, also from Silicone intakes. They were just mild steel as I'm not set up to weld stainless yet. So I'll need to monitor em for any rusty nonsense. The clamps are stainless as that's the only way they came. I love having modular exhaust though. Not that I plan on changing anything out any time soon, but I like that I can pull it apart and put it back together without needing gaskets and without having to worry about leaks.
I'll stop the rambling now though and just say if you've not done your own exhaust, and have some access to a welder, have at it. It was a great learning experience and I think I did all right for my first time welding one up. You can do it!
Thanks! I got some polyurethane exhaust hangers that I'm putting in to tighten things up. I love my poly =D
I do need to possibly adjust one of the steel hangers themselves. There is a good amount of room from the bend to the flare at the end. It looks like it could hold a 2" wide bit of rubber. That allows for things to slide around a bit on me though due to the way I had to position the metal hangers themselves. So I might nip the end off of one, remove a bit of the rod and then tack the flare back on the end.
Shit all man, slowly insulating the inside, but not so much now that it's cooled down. Also have a leak coming in somewhere I'm getting a floor full of water. I need to see if it's coming in from around the replaced windshield or not, if so hit that with some window weld.
I plan on doing a gauge bezel mod at some point, just waiting on that from Charb and possibly reupholstering the drivers seat but I'm waiting on some foam from Klum for that.
Got some DA spindles coming in for a potential big brake kit. I'll probably swap out the ball joints on there and also do a hub bearing replacement just so I know it's fresh. And just general over all cleanup of the whole unit itself. Might install some extended studs on there as well in the event I need a bit of a spacer to give me a little more wiggle room to clear the brakes.
Comments
I just gotta catch 'm all lol.
Also picked up some metal to make some shims for the rear sway. Gotta drop it down at least an inch to be able to get it in good alignment using my current end links. I could get longer ones, but I'm not too bothered about that at the moment.
Also had to zip up a chunk of the exhaust with the welder today. Where they had put this 2.5" to 2" reducer it had cracked across the top at the taper. So bandaid that sucker with the flux welder since I don't have my garage wired up for the big welder yet.
Header is on backorder, so hopefully they can manage to get that in stock sometime soon so I can work on doing the rest of the exhaust and get this nasty annoying raspy crap off of there. Sounds like a nest of bees in a coffee can.
http://www.civicwagon.com/showthread.php?18538-Got-your-red-donut-Installing-an-energy-suspension-rear-trailing-arm-bushing&goto=newpost
Booooooooooo!
They wouldn't align it. said the control arms up front need done. They wanted $500 to do that. I have bushings for it myself already. So I'll do that and take it on back.
Wish they had told me that before I waited two hours.
This thing is driving damn near like a new car now, even with needing to do one more strut and spring ;-)
The rail road tracks by my house that would damn near jar the fillings out of your teeth are very tame now. Either way I'll stop rambling and save the rest for my writeup of doing the front suspension. Weather permitting, I'll be on that tomorrow.
http://www.civicwagon.com/showthread.php?18560-Front-struts-Bilstein-H-amp-R-combo
Absolutely loving the way it handles now. Phenomenal improvement. Feels like a completely different car, no more suspension by stay puft.
Just showing what I put on in there. I'll try to knock some dirt off things and get a "classy" pic.
15069 http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/BHH0/15069.oap?
They had two other rebuild kits there that I looked at at first, it seems they were meant for much bigger pistons. I didn't realize there was a variety available for the civic. Anyone else know about this?
Either way, quick rebuild took less than 20 minutes to pop it apart rebuild it and then rebleed the system. Word of advice, put the dust boot on the piston and then press everything in place. Putting the dust boot on first just made things a major pain.
But yeah, at this price and simplicity. If you're doing anything with your brakes and you don't know the last time the calipers were rebuilt. I'd recommend rebuilding them.
Only 2" at the final exit so not expecting anything monstrous, but my current exhaust is a turd and figured might as well do it up. worst case when I go to upgrade I'll have a full 2" exhaust to sell =D
It does look snazzy, in my opinion, with the fresh coat on it. Should hopefully see some reduction in engine bay temps as well. Pair this off with a new radiator and fan/shroud setup and it'll be rock and roll for sure.
Gonna have to bust out the flap wheel to tidy up a few parts though. But that's to be expected with inexpensive headers.
I also cleaned up the inside of the header for the most part, maybe a little more work but overall killed that excess metal in there. Just waiting on a couple 180 & 45 bends to come in to have all the parts to do the rear bendy bits to connect to the muffler.
Here's all the stuff I have so far though. Thrush Turbo Muffler, Thrush Glasspack, the 4-2-1 header. New "cat" and a good bit of stainless flex pipe. I know I'm not doing stainless welds, but I'm not too terribly worried about it. The flex was only $18 and I want to get my welding skills up a bit more before I switch over to doing full stainless. I figure I can get this one together though and it'll last me a good long while. Here in Texas, rust isn't too much of a concern anyway, and I'll probably be doing some exhaust paint on most of the stuff anyway.
Also have a couple V band flanges there and not shown 7ish feet of straight tube, and some hangers. Can't find an exhaust tip I like. Might just run it as tube and call it good enough. With luck and time though I should be able to get this in place in a couple weekends. Then good bye shit sounding, no flex, leaky "new" exhaust. Seriously...
Cranked the voltage up to get some flatter welds and welded on the first V band flange as well.
The real test will come when I go to do the butt welds on the bendy bits at the back. Still waiting on those pieces to arrive though.
Setting up the other side of the flange here. I've come across a few forums where people use V band clamps/flanges and get less than optimal results. You can always use a dab of RTV in there as needed, but I came across a page where another guy set them up like this. I think some people want to just have them flush to the end and weld them as such. But if you have one done where the pipe is set back from the face of the flange and then have the next pipe inline sticking out past the flange it lets you get them perfectly aligned.
There is the tendency in these flanges to not want to mate up perfectly if they're not aligned when you clamp. This eliminates that and all you have to do is fit them together and then clamp. It'll be cleanly aligned. Though that's said in theory, I'll of course update when it's done and see if I have any leaks out of the box.
Whenever I drive up a speedbump the rear wheel lifts from the ground an in 2 out of 3 cases the spring needs to settle again.
BAAAANG! attentions on me. lol
making it all new!
A barrel connector had all the insulation disintegrate, so it would occasionally hit the transmission housing and POP!
At least I hope that's what it is, I moved the wire and reinsulated it and so far things are staying peachy. Yay!
So here it is side by side with the old setup.
My only complaint here is that the old one did tuck up under there a bit better. It is a smaller system though, I can work with it.
Crammed it in there. It's a little tight, I need to try to readjust the radiator a bit right now it's hitting the fan housing just barely. Might tweak that a bit.
It comes through nicely though. No really clearance issues right here.
Hanger for the old pipe. I removed it entirely since it was a separate piece. Along with another unused hanger at the rear that was hitting where I was routing the exhaust.
Here you can see it hanging down.
Hanger ended up sitting right on top of the resonator. No real bother to me though it was only a $40 resonator.
Welding up the rear muffler section.
Low hanging fruit. I am fixing this ASAP. I need to weld in a new hanger up there in the tunnel and raise this up. The length of flex pipe I got is allowing for a good bit of sag. I can raise this probably 2 if not 3 inches before I run into any interference. Apologies for the blurry pics it was around 1am when I was taking these and the phone camera doesn't behave well then. I'll get out there with the iPad shortly and take some better shots.
Muffler on. Yay!
All right, next day in. nabbed another rubber hanger and welded up a rod onto the cat to get some ground clearance back. Sorting out that low hanging fruit mentioned before.
Fortunately the rods I ordered were plenty long so I was able to put them at strange angles to get the effect I needed. There was no hanger mount this far forward since the new header doesn't bolt up to the bottom of the engine like the old one does. Also since this was sagging due to the length of the flex pipe that wouldn't do me any good anyway. So I took a hanger off the rear that was no longer in use and was actually interfering with the new pipe and welded it onto the car itself.
With that done the only thing left, besides minor fiddling is the tail pipe. I was unable to find an exhaust tip I liked, and DrFink said he was a fan of a simple turn down, so I figured the hell with it, why not. I have some extra bends laying around anyway so I cut myself a little turn down.
Tacked it on to the rest of the tail pipe scavenged from the other part of the bend, that I also put a V band on, because why not V bands are awesome! And that also lets me position the tail pipe as I see fit.
Up Periscope!
Some things that need sorted, the header comes in slight contact with the fan housing. I'll need to deal with that. I'm thinking I might wrap it as well because things are still getting a bit warm under there. A shame to hide my lovely black jet-hot pipes, but if I can drop engine bay temps even further, well then that will please me just fine. Then just some cleaning here and there. Since it's mostly all modular I may disassemble the entire thing and paint it with some exhaust paint. Undecided on that though. I'll definitely get some more pics of the setup though. Probably take all the modular bits out and take good pictures of them laid out. Save for the flexpipe/cat assembly as that's gasketed on to the header so I don't want to screw with that since it's one of those funky graphite gaskets.
A couple people have asked about the sound, and I definitely need to get a sound clip. My phone wasn't having it though, it would up the recording volume when there wasn't sound, then when I'd rev the engine it would start clipping. I'll see if the iPad does any better, if not might have to bust out the proper camera on it with a better mic. The tone is definitely deeper, but it's actually quieter, which is what I was going for. Granted my basis for comparison was the shit old exhaust that had a leak at every weld seam due to them having the entire thing solid with no flex points. So it sounded like a swarm of bees inside a coffee can. It's got a bit more volume up til about 2200 rpm then it quiets on down. So while I did pay for the header and getting it coated just for experimentation sake, the rest of the exhaust was cheap and sounds great in my opinion. Thrush 30" glass pack as a resonator in the middle, followed up by a Thrush Turbo muffler. Both parts I think were under $40 each. Then probably 4ish feet of straight tube. Various bits from two 45 & 180 bends, another thanks to DrFink for the suggestion on that. A cat and a length of flex line from siliconeintakes.com the flex was I think maybe $18. Then the V band clamps and flanges, also from Silicone intakes. They were just mild steel as I'm not set up to weld stainless yet. So I'll need to monitor em for any rusty nonsense. The clamps are stainless as that's the only way they came. I love having modular exhaust though. Not that I plan on changing anything out any time soon, but I like that I can pull it apart and put it back together without needing gaskets and without having to worry about leaks.
I'll stop the rambling now though and just say if you've not done your own exhaust, and have some access to a welder, have at it. It was a great learning experience and I think I did all right for my first time welding one up. You can do it!
I do need to possibly adjust one of the steel hangers themselves. There is a good amount of room from the bend to the flare at the end. It looks like it could hold a 2" wide bit of rubber. That allows for things to slide around a bit on me though due to the way I had to position the metal hangers themselves. So I might nip the end off of one, remove a bit of the rod and then tack the flare back on the end.
I plan on doing a gauge bezel mod at some point, just waiting on that from Charb and possibly reupholstering the drivers seat but I'm waiting on some foam from Klum for that.