Civics of this age came with both manual and power steering. Both racks have a clamp and donut mount on the passenger side and a pair of bolts on the driver’s side. While the racks may look the same, the power steering rack is slightly larger in diameter. Honda decided the best way to handle this discrepancy was to design separate subframes and bushings for each steering rack. Shopping for manual steering rack bushings is a nightmare because every single set lists “power steering only.” However if you order Energy Suspension 16.10101 you will find they are actually designed for manual steering racks. Energy Suspension’s website insists these are for power racks. Their installation instructions even insist they are for power racks. They are not.And here is your proof: a manual steering rack with bright red Energy Suspension urethane bushings installed. Be warned, these will be very hard to install with tie rods in the car. There is very little clearance to get the upper bushing/sleeve wiggle out between the rack and subframe. Also, if you’re a little confused how I installed steering rack bushings into the subframe when I had the subframe in powdercoat, the answer is there are two front subframes. One in front of the engine and one behind it. The steering rack mounts to the rear front subframe and the front front subframe holds the radius rods. One thing I learned in servicing this car is that Honda is WEIRD.While we are keeping the front swaybar, we do need to replace the endlinks and mounting bushings. The bushings and end links are long past their sell by date. We picked up a set of Energy Suspension mounting bushings and Prothane end links. Prothane and Energy Suspension parts are pretty much identical but the decision comes down to which are in stock and which are on backorder. As popular as golden age Hondas are, EF parts are starting to go out of production and we had to get creative to get everything we needed.If you thought the old endlink bushings looked nasty, check out how much the steel bolt had corroded underneath. I’m amazed this didn’t break.We spent weeks searching for new swaybar brackets. They do not exist. Later Civics used two mounting bolts so those are not compatible. DA Integras use the same design but a larger bar so those don’t work either. We were forced to refurbish our rusty old brackets so we would have a front bar.
I absolutely loved the Kingpin spherical bearing setup on Project S2000. All that suspension work is going to transform the car. What can you do to stiffen the chassis within the rules?
Well it’s already got a rollcage and front strut tower brace. We can add a few more per the rules. I would like to add to the cage as it is very basic. Could use some extra diagonals.
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Really looking forward to updates. This takes me back to Sport Compact Car days.
Glad it brings back happy memories. Got lots more coming. Thanks for reading!
I absolutely loved the Kingpin spherical bearing setup on Project S2000. All that suspension work is going to transform the car. What can you do to stiffen the chassis within the rules?
Well it’s already got a rollcage and front strut tower brace. We can add a few more per the rules. I would like to add to the cage as it is very basic. Could use some extra diagonals.