Wanted - LSD for 1986 ITC Civic

[Motor City Hamilton]

I am looking for a Mugen, Quaife or other similar LSD for a 1986 Honda Civic for use in ITC club racing. King Motorsports seems to only handle 1988 and newer. Having the same luck looking for a Quife. Any other places I should be looking?

Also looking for a heavier that stock front sway bar. Any suggestions for parts for the older generation Civics?

Thanks,
MCH

[Catch22]

OPM Autosports makes a very effective LSD for that car. The Mugen is excellent, but also quite expensive and can be hard to find. I doubt its even in production anymore.

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#22 ITC Honda Civic
3rd Place 2004 ARRC
1st Place 2004 ARRC Enduro

[R2 Racing]

OPM would be happy to do it for you - they're all I use. Price is good, clutch type design (which is best for roadracing IMO), send them your diff and they'll pack it with the LSD and send it right back to you, and you really cannot go wrong with their customer service.

As far as the front sway bar is concerned, on an ITC '86 Civic HB, just remove the stock one and throw it away - there, done!

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Kevin
Ruck Racing
'92 ITA Acura Integra RS
'92 ITC Honda Civic CX
'85 ITC Honda Civic S
'95 ITS Honda Prelude Si

[Greg Gauper]

The OEM 84-87 CRX bar is slightly thicker than the OEM Civic bar and is a direct bolt-in replacement, so you can probably get one dirt cheap from a boneyard. Just make sure you replace the rubber bushings in the mounts as well since they are sized for the specific bar diameter. But as Kevin indicated, your best bet is to remove the bar completely or disconnect one link. Unless you are running some crazy spring rates in the rear, a front bar will really kill the balance of the car.

On my G-Prod converted from ITC, I found that the cornering loads from racing slicks gave me far too much body roll, even with the monster 29mm front torsion bars. So in my specific case I had to reconnect the stock thin front bar. The car does corner flatter and is faster, but I don't like the balance (I have a lot more understeer than before but the net effect is that the car is faster....there is room for improvement.) I plan to correct this problem this year with some stiffer rear springs (currently at 800# and my adjustable rear bar is set full stiff), but that has to wait until I can afford a set of rear shocks that can handle 1000# springs.

But you really should try the car without a front bar. It's easy to do a back-to-back test in practice. Just unbolt one link and you will effectively disable the front bar, excluding some minor effect due to bushing friction. Try it both ways. Since it only takes a few seconds to remove the link, you can even experiment by pitting halfway thru the practice session and have a crew member remove the bolt link.

It will feel different, and will have a bit more body roll, but still is acceptable for IT DOT tires. The proof is in the stopwatch.

[Motor City Hamilton]

Thanks Greg. You seem to know a ton about these cars. I really appreciate all of the advice.

I did try the car without the front bar and it was far worse. We are on Hoosier racing slicks racing at Waterford Hills. The body roll was so bad that it actually created less steering and was really inconsistent. The car was rolling over onto the front outside front. Waterford has more sweeping rights than sweeping lefts, so the front tire on the outside most really grew in temp from when we ran the front bar.

I was thinking of trying a stiffer front bar to bring the body roll into check, without taking away front grip. If the tortion bars were kept soft and I added a bigger swaybar, in theory I'd still get load transfer to the front and get a little more even distribution on both front tires. Hopefully all of that would equal more front grip???

Do you have an opinion on that?

[Greg Gauper]

It all depends on how big your front T-bars are.

The best approach is to run the largest torsion bars that will fit (29mm) and then use the smallest front sway bar to limit the body roll. Then balance the car with the rear springs and rear sway bar adjustment.

In theory you could get by with smaller T-bars and a bigger sway bar, but the car will work better with big T-bars and a small sway bar. The bigger T-bars help keep the car from standing on its nose under hard braking. A bigger sway bar doesn't help in this regard. Also, the problem with a thicker sway bar is that it will pick up the inside front wheel. A limited slip will help overcome the wheel spin issue, but you still have the problem of reduced front grip from lifting the inside wheel, and you will still 'cook' the outside front wheel. You can probably make it work by playing with rear springs and rear sway bar settings, but the best solution is big front bars and a teeny-tiny sway bar. In my case, if I could find a bar smaller than the OEM Civic bar, I would run it.

BTW - I run Hoosier 20x8-13's on my car as well, and had the same sidewall 'rollover' issue from excessive body roll as well. This isn't as much of an issue with DOT tires since you typical ran lots and lots of negative camber, but slicks don't like much camber or else you start to eat the inside edges.

The problem with experimenting with different front sway bars is that they are a pain to swap out. That said, if you run back-to-back weekends you could experiment with a CRX bar one week vs a Civic bar another. I've heard rumors, but can't confirm it, that an 86-87 Integra bar is a similar shape but thicker and might fit, but don't hold me to it (the torsion bars and suspension design are similar). If you can get one from a boneyard to play with, give it a shot.

BTW - The nice thing about the Hoosier slick is you can put them on any corner in any direction, and you can also flip them over on the rim to help even out the wear. If you run at tracks with predominant corners (like Waterford) rotating/flipping the tires will help extend your tire life.

One other weird thing I have noticed (and a fellow Honda Prod driver noticed the same thing), you might experiment with a softer compound on the rear tires like a R45 or an R35 if it's cool out. This is counter-intuitive since most people think who cares what the rear does, put a hard compound in the rear to help the car rotate. But for some reason, the softer rear tire works better. I used to use the same compound on all four corners, and rotated the older heat cycled tires to the rear and put the new tires up front. Don't ask me why, but the car rotated better and felt more neutral with R45's on the rear and R55's up front. You don't need new tires on the rear, a set of take-offs will work fine and should last all season. But if you can get two R45 take-offs cheap, give it a shot. I occasionally run old R55's on the rear in practice to save the R45's for qualifying/race, just to limit the number of heat cycles.

I've also experimented with running a 7" tire in the rear with 8" tires up front. I had a bunch of 7" Avons left over from my first year of Prod racing. The car still felt better (more nuetral, rotated better) with the softer compound 8" slicks vs the zillion heat cycled 7" on the rears. Don't ask me why.

[This message has been edited by Greg Gauper (edited January 06, 2005).]

[Motor City Hamilton]

Thanks Greg. I think I'd like to try the CRX bar if I can find one cheep. I plan to hit some test and tune days this season.

Crazy that a softer rear tire would work as you say. It's things like that that come along and change everything that you thought you knew about vehicle dynamics. But, I guess it just needs to be tried and put to the lap time test.

This is going to be a pretty newby question, but I've only raced for part of one season. Where should I look on the tortion bars to determine the size that is on the car? Is it pretty clearly marked? Just want to make sure that I don't already have 27mm on the car.

Thanks again Greg. You're really helping me learn. And, hopefully the guys at Waterford will notice this season as I move up from the mid-pack.

[Greg Gauper]

You can check by measuring the diameter of the bar in the non-splined region. BTW - 29mm is the largest bar you can fit, not 27mm. It's real easy to tell as there will be no step from the splined diameter to the non-splined smooth diameter. Picture a solid bar with splines. You can't go any bigger because they can't be larger than the spline diameter which would prevent you from installing them. 27mm is a common size for IT for use with DOT tires.

Regarding sway bars...the other thing to check is search e-bay and see if you can find an old Mugen front bar. I used to run one on my old CRX many, many years ago. It is much bigger than either the Civic or CRX bar.

What ever you do, make sure you measure the bar diameter before you go thru the trouble of removing and installing it, as there were some differences in bar diameter between some of the 1st generation CRX's (HF vs. DX vs. Si). In other words, don't go thru the trouble of swapping and then find out you put the exact same size bar back in. You might check if the Civic Si had a larger bar as well.

The softer rear tire quirk was unique to slicks. When I ran ITC on DOT tires, I'd put the hard-as-a-rock old heat cycled tires on the rear and they worked great and really helped the car rotate. Like I said..it was counter intuitive, but you could feel the difference.

[Motor City Hamilton]

Check out these pics of my car in action. It handles pretty well right now, but I just can't get over how much it leans over, like a dog pissin' on a hydrant. This was my first year in racing, so maybe front drive ITC cars are just supposed to do this? If there are gains to be made by trying to fix this body roll, then I'd like to try some of the stuff mentioned. If this is what these cars do, then I'll just leave it be and keep driving smoothly. Your thoughts?

http://www.waterfordhills.com/gallery/jwr6y0432.jpg

http://www.waterfordhills.com/gallery/jgr3y0432.jpg

[gran racing]

What spring rates are you using?

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Dave Gran
NER ITB #13
'87 Honda Prelude si

[wbp]

MCH, if you are running the 24 mm front torsion bars, run the big Civic Station Wagon sway bar in front. If you have the 27 mm torsion bars, the stock CRX bar or the Civic hatchback bar are your choices.
This is with Hoosier DOT tires on ITC winner.

[jc836]

You might check with ADDCO. They have some hard to find sway bars-as that is all they do. We stayed stock on the front of the 89 and use their rear bar in place of the stock CRX piece. Then again you do have T-bars and that is somewhat different.
Good luck

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Grandpa's toys-modded suspensions and a few other tweaks
'89 CRX Si-SCCA ITA #99
'99 Prelude=a sweet song-FOR SALE
'03 Dodge Dakota Club Cab V8-Patriot Blue gonna tow