1995 Civic VX progress/updates/questions

[KROHN27]

Originally Posted by OG VX

Great work sir! So glad to here about the positive progress. I bet you can get to 58 with adding a front air dam extension. I noticed much less turbulence to have to fight once I added mine.

I just installed some Eibach Sportline springs on the car this weekend. They came with used OEM shocks that were not in as good of condition as mine. I went ahead and ran them anyway, as I didn't want to fool with a spring compressor. They ride surprisingly well, even with the aged shocks. I plan to swap on my OEM shocks this coming weekend. Hoping that fixes the slightly bumpy ride and few rattles here in there. It is my understanding that with the Sportline's, you CAN run the OEM shocks, though aftermarkets are recommended, solely because they will wear out the OEM shocks over time. But, if I can eek out 15K or so out of them, while riding nice, I'll do that.

I have a 2" gap at all corners. Very happy with the Sportline height. I'll make an update post to my thread soon.

Thanks for the insight! Did you get your car aligned after you got them installed? I'd love to see some photos of the car with the springs on so I can really get an idea of what it would look like for me. I'm right down the road as well, maybe I can pop up to Mooresville and check it out sometime.

[OG VX]

^^ Yeah, that would be great.

Alignment, yes, I'm looking into a camber set for the fronts. Likely will install those when I swap out the shocks.

Their is a very slight pull to the right when steering now. It's not severe, and did get a bit better once the new suspension "settled".

With the "pro kit", OEM shocks and suspension geometry is not affected severe enough to justify new shocks and an alignment kit.

But, the "sportline kit" is more aggressive. I'm glad I went with it though, as I believe the Pro Kit would have been too subtle of a change to really do much of anything... Being that the VX is the lightest Civic trim, I don't think it drops as much as, say an EX model.

[Ecky]

How far off from your previous tires do you odometer and speedo read?

[KROHN27]

Originally Posted by OG VX

^^ Yeah, that would be great.

Alignment, yes, I'm looking into a camber set for the fronts. Likely will install those when I swap out the shocks.

Their is a very slight pull to the right when steering now. It's not severe, and did get a bit better once the new suspension "settled".

With the "pro kit", OEM shocks and suspension geometry is not affected severe enough to justify new shocks and an alignment kit.

But, the "sportline kit" is more aggressive. I'm glad I went with it though, as I believe the Pro Kit would have been too subtle of a change to really do much of anything... Being that the VX is the lightest Civic trim, I don't think it drops as much as, say an EX model.

I just realized I said that I have the sport kit, but I have the black eibach springs, which are the street kit (pro) kit, so they would sit up a little higher than the sports I'm sure. I just checked out your thread though, car looks great!

How far off from your previous tires do you odometer and speedo read?

I really never calculated the difference with my old tires until just now. My old tires were 175/70/13 and these new tires are factory size for the insight which is 165/65/14. When my speedo says 60mph, I'm going roughly 57mph. Naturally with smaller tires, I'm going to turn slightly more RPMs but these 165's are 5.7% smaller in width, and I really think the car gets into lean burn quicker, and seems lighter on its feet.

[Ecky]

Just plugged it into a calculator, and the difference should be less than 1% optimistic with the new wheels. Fantastic that they're almost a perfect match.

[KROHN27]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Just plugged it into a calculator, and the difference should be less than 1% optimistic with the new wheels. Fantastic that they're almost a perfect match.

Well I just went through and re-did all my trips in my fuel log since I wasn't adding the correct % with my old 175/70/13 tires. I also calculated it right for my current tires. Basically all my old mpg readings went up slightly, and my most recent trip went down slightly. From my calculations, the tires on the car now (165/65/14) are 2.9% difference from the stock (165/70/13). So every time I fill up the car and calculate based on the trip, I need to subtract 2.9% of the miles off the trip. I hope I'm doing that right.

[Ecky]

The Insight rims are 14 inches, not 70. =)

[KROHN27]

Originally Posted by Ecky

The Insight rims are 14 inches, not 70. =)

Hahaha I fixed that, but I didn't use that as a calculating factor lol.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by KROHN27

Well I finally ran an entire tank through the Civic since the Insight wheels, bridgestone RE92s, and the partial grille block. I was able to get my best mpg ever, which was 56.77mpg

Congrats!

Also: those Insight wheels look great on your car!

[KROHN27]

So in my quest to correct my mpg readings, and calculate the % difference in actual miles traveled to the trip miles, I realized I was plugging my insight wheels into the calculator as 13 inch rims and not 14 inch. Could anyone double check this for me? Using this calculator (pictured), I'm comparing the stock OEM size 165/70/13 combo with the current 165/65/14. Is the red circled number the right percentage I should be ADDING to the overall trip miles? It looks like the insight wheels and tires are just slightly larger than stock. I'm just a little confused as to why my speedo is reading off (it will say I'm going 60 when I'm actually going around 58). According to the calculator, it should be slightly the opposite.

I did replace my VSS with one of the cheap $9 ones from ebay because I was trying to fix my jumpy speedo problem. (It didn't fix it at all, actually made it worse). Could that maybe be the culprit?