Help guys!!

[deliusario]

hey guys i just bought 1984 honda city t1. here's some pics below.
can u guys give me some suggestion as i really love this can and wants to modify it a bit, such as make this car bit lower, u guys have any idea?
thanks very much.

[deliusario]

hey i dont know why my pic not shown.. hehe sorry newbie here..thanks

[mangusta]

Take a look in the infobase, there is tons of info on how to modify the car...

I wouldn't bother lowering it much, it looks nice, but the handling is already great, better off spending thee dough on turbo dump pipe + mods, exhaust, boost controller, all the things that make them really fly

[James]

I fixed your pics for you, welcome to the site.

In all honesty the only way you can cheaply lower your car is by cutting the springs, if you only cut off around 1.5 coils so they are still captive you sohuld still get warrants fine and you can get a nice 1-1.5" drop.

[turbocab]

welcome to the site.
that is a real nice clean looking t1,good buy!how mutch did u pay?
matt

[deliusario]

Thx for the comments and fixed my pics..yup i was thinking to cut the springs but i have a better idea, might just compress them..its a bit money but worthy..i just scared my baby loosing her handling ..yeah i bought it for 12**NZD just 2 days ago, lucky me the car condition really nice out look thums up and only done a few k's..but u know i am a newbee dont kno anything bout engine, but ride nice as i smoke it in front of every one hehehe I ll learn from this forum alot got a few idea about bulldogs and t1 t2 never new that before..reason i bought it because i have another city non-turbo one..yeahh looking forward for u guys comments and help to build my car..and i promise my self not to sell it thanks a lot guys!!!!
keep posting

[falco]

Hi!

Yeah, compressing the springs is probably a bad idea. It'll have all sorts of unpleasant and dangerous effects on the handling. The first time you hit a corner with bumps at a reasonable speed, the car will be off the road. Mind you, any lowering is likely to have as many bad side-effects as it has benefits, unless you fix the camber angle afterwards. My vote would go to leaving the suspension as it is until you can afford to do it properly.

Looks like a nice clean car, that one. I really like the white steel wheels, for some reason. Looks really serious!

f.

[James]

Hi!

Yeah, compressing the springs is probably a bad idea. It'll have all sorts of unpleasant and dangerous effects on the handling. The first time you hit a corner with bumps at a reasonable speed, the car will be off the road. Mind you, any lowering is likely to have as many bad side-effects as it has benefits, unless you fix the camber angle afterwards. My vote would go to leaving the suspension as it is until you can afford to do it properly.

Looks like a nice clean car, that one. I really like the white steel wheels, for some reason. Looks really serious!

f.

I don't agree with what you have said there falco, except on the white steelies, they do actually look pretty good

In our macpherson strut hondas there is not actually much camber change with lowering. I have the front of my car pretty much as low as it can go and I have -1 degree of camber on one side and -2 on the other side which is fine, I dont get any uneven tyre wear.

Another problem you can have with lowering is bump steer. This is a bad problem with the 1st gen civics, however with 2nd gen civics and cities it isn't really a problem at all. Again I speak from experience, with wheels of the correct offset and a suitable width I have pretty much eliminated bump steer from my car.

Compressing the factory springs isn't ideal but I have heard a lot of success stories from people that have done it. I have a friend in New Plymouth that runs compressed factory springs in his tarmac sprint car (laser turbo 1800). He said the ride and height of them is practically identical to that of low king springs. I can only assume that they re-temper the springs stiffer when they compress them.

I personally have had a lot of success with cutting springs, if you cant afford to get custom suspension parts then done responsibly, it can be a very effective mod. I do it by cutting off 1/2 or 1/4 of a coil at a time and re-assembling the strut to check the captivity of the spring. I keep going until the spring is still captive by about half a coil so the spring still sits nicely in the steel cup. Clean up and flatten the end of with a grinder, wack a bit of black paint on there and your away. Cutting has the added benifit of stiffening the springs at the same time as lowering your car, something which is important to retain adequate ground clearance when you hit bumps and things.

EDIT: Does anyone else think his car looks lower than factory already in that first pic?

[turbocab]

yeah the white steelies do look kinda tuff.
ide leave the suspension alone for now if i were you and make it go faster ie exhaust and maby raise the boost a few psi.
and bigelboe no i dont think it looks lower than normal in the first pic...as we say in the building industry "nah mate its not dogey its just a trick of the eye"
if you look at the gap between the sills and the ground....still pretty high.
matty

[Hyperblade]

Congrats on the purchase was a very mint car from what i saw on trademe.

Its not lowered Bigleboe, remember T1's run 175/70/12's!!!!


deliusario your first mod before you consider anything else is getting some T2 tyres and rims on there 185/60/13's They fit straight on and the handling improves immensely.

Do it before you do anything else, seriously, not worth spending any money on anything power related if you can't get the power to the ground. It also makes it handle and brake that much better especially in the wet, it makes it an all round safer car to drive. And you will find you enjoy driving it more.

[deliusario]

deliusario your first mod before you consider anything else is getting some T2 tyres and rims on there 185/60/13's They fit straight on and the handling improves immensely.

Hi hyperblade just wondering is it the wheels looks the same like u got in ur pic?if that t2 wheels actually i allready have them from my previous owner..just change it with my white steeling wheels and its not just steeling wheels its maximum strength with minimum weight bought it from strong 4 honda and its pretty rare used to worn them on my city 85' non turbo..yeahh i ll thing about it and see which one is better..but i was thinking to just keep the rims but ill change the smaller tyres to 60 from 65 maybe..

can anyone give me the step, price and where i can do my engine just to improve the speed?

thanks!keep posting guys

[turbocab]

Hi hyperblade just wondering is it the wheels looks the same like u got in ur pic?if that t2 wheels actually i allready have them from my previous owner..just change it with my white steeling wheels and its not just steeling wheels its maximum strength with minimum weight bought it from strong 4 honda and its pretty rare used to worn them on my city 85' non turbo..yeahh i ll thing about it and see which one is better..but i was thinking to just keep the rims but ill change the smaller tyres to 60 from 65 maybe..

can anyone give me the step, price and where i can do my engine just to improve the speed?

thanks!keep posting guys

what!didnt understand a word of that.

[falco]

Blah. Warning, I'm slightly irritated and stuck at home (not feeling well) so this will be a long post.

If you lower, your camber behaviour over your suspension's travel will almost always be changed. It's possible for the camber to remain exactly the same, but on the the wrong side of the curve (i.e. for McPherson-struts that normally run the lower arm very slightly below horizontal). Or maybe the change will be minor, but on bump, camber will change far too quickly. These things can't be measured simply by taking a static camber measurement (with a stationary vehicle). To do a decent job, all this needs to be considered; most people won't notice the difference in handling until they've hit a tree. If it's close enough for your purposes afterwards, fine, but I'd consider it a half-arsed job if suspension behaviour wasn't checked throughly afterwards. Tyre wear is irrelevant, if it's wrong enough that tyre wear becomes uneven, and someone's driven that car reasonably hard for long enough that the tyres wear unevenly, they have no idea what they're doing.

Re-tempered ('re-sprung') springs are not compressed springs. You can always (as far as I know) compress an automotive spring to fully collapsed without causing plastic deformation. The steel must be heat-treated in order to shorten them. Compressed springs are springs run with more compression on them than intended. People often do this on trailers and single-axle trucks, which can be OK (though I still wouldn't). I've seen it done on cars, which is usually suicidal (putting it simply, the tyres will tend to skip over dips in the road). Obviously, re-tempering a spring will be fine if it's done properly, though it usually results in a spring with a shorter lifetime. Don't leave a car with re-tempered springs sitting on a non-level surface for a long period of time, all sorts of odd things happen.

Very very very important note - cutting springs does not stiffen the ride. Every spring has a constant that defines its compressability, that won't change if the spring is cut (you just end up with two springs with the same value). If you cut it, all you're doing is decreasing its length and travel, the spring constant (i.e. stiffness) is the same. Here's a good explanation:
http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/210442
http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/209914
It's all simple math really.

Also, it's vital that if you screw with your springs (mostly changing the spring rate) that you set your shocks up to work with the new spring rate. Well, maybe not if you don't give a crap about really good handling, but if you do... yeah. Here's someone who can explain this better than I can:
http://www.wincom.net/trog/autocross_secrets6.html
Everyone who thinks about modifying suspension should read this, and the rest of the suspension section, and at least consider following his advice. I've heard most of this before, but it's well laid out and well explained.

It's not possible to remove bump steer by adjusting the wheels themselves. Bump steer is solely an effect of the relationship between the steering tie rods and the lower suspension arm (assuming McPherson strut again). Here are two pages with the correct definition of bump steer:
http://www.bakerprecision.com/longacr17a.htm
http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/longtech3.htm
Putting it simply, bump steer is a change in toe-in caused by compression of the front suspension. Normally, when you compress the front suspension, toe-in increases. It's a desireable thing provided it's set up right (my disputed opinion there), and another thing that lowering screws up. If you lower the car, even if you adjust the tie rods to give you the correct static toe-in, bump steer will often be too large. This effect is extremely difficult to avoid, you normally just have to live with it and hope you don't hit too many big bumps when cornering hard.
I suspect what bigelboe's talking about is not bump steer, but offset problems brought about by fitment of the wrong wheels manifesting themselves as instability and other steering-related problems. This does need careful attention.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, I get bloody annoyed with people who fiddle with factory suspension without knowing precisely why things are set up as they are. Take a look at the vehicles that fail to take country road corners in the inside lane, and kill someone in the outer lane. So often, they're lowered cars. Even if the modifier measured the camber and thought 'close enough', that's only part of the story. I've been studying suspension design for years, and I wouldn't trust myself to make the final adjustments.
Recommendations (for those in Auckland at least):
- George Stocks have an excellent shock lab. They're also good at re-valving and modifying shocks to work as required. They won't do all your work for you though.
- Autolign/Racelign will do everything, and get it right. Your wallet will suffer, of course.
- At least talk to a really experienced and knowledgeable suspension guy if you want to modify your suspension. This does NOT mean the mindless cretin at your local wheel alignment franchise. I've had those 'experts' do things that made me cringe.

f.

[James]

Sounds like an interesting read, I will read it when I have a study break! Sorry If I offended you, I was merely presenting my opinion based somewhat on suspension theory and somewhat on experience.

[falco]

I don't easily get offended as such, but I can get very, err, opinionated if people disagree with me without providing a bit of info on what's wrong with what I was saying. It's OK to disagree with theory (probably a good thing in fact) but when you do it's vital to provide a bit of experimental proof. Opinions and experience really don't count for anything if what you're doing is a science, it's all about specific proof. I used to work for the Porsche and Alfa Romeo touring car teams when they did NZ based events, and even they could be a bit short on real science sometimes, but it's the only way to really make good, reliable, repeatable progress.

And yes, I am normally a bad-tempered bastard.

f.