Front Suspension

I've been working super slowly on this car, and I've been updating my online Civic build diary even less.  Anyways, I'm at a slightly more advanced state of progress, but I will retroactively update to show what's going into this project.

Here's a couple pics of the front suspension parts that came off.  One of the biggest challenges with working on a car of this age is rust, especially when we're talking about the little cotter pins that go through all the ball joint castle nuts.  TIP: soak the pins and nuts in PB Blaster and let sit for 10ish minutes.  Then straighten the pins as much as you can, clamp vice-grips on the open end of the pins roughly 2mm from the castle nut.  Tap with a hammer and repeat until you can "easily" pull the pin out by using a Craftsman cotter pin puller (an 8 dollar tool that will save you lots of frustration).  Once all 6 cotter pins are out (both steering rod ends, upper arm ball joints, and lower ball joints), removing the nuts and the rest of the suspension is pretty easy, assuming you have ball-joint separators (either a fork or a powerscrew type).  If you don't, you can just neanderthal it and whack it with a BFH (Big something Hammer.  Nobody quite knows what the F stands for).

Here's what you have left: Subframe (you can also correctly call it a cross-member since Pick and Pull charges less money for it that way...) bolted to the unibody, steering rack mounted up there with the rod ends just hangin out, and your car magically suspended in midair.

NOTE: I had jackstands placed here for awhile since it looked structural.  I noticed no ill-effects from supporting the car here.  However, this is not the factory-service-manual recommended jack location, so place stands here at your own risk.

After taking the front suspension apart, I noticed something pretty interesting.  I placed 94 Integra RS arms on top of my 98 Civic DX arms, and they looked basically identical (at least in the mounting dimensions).  To the best of my tape-measuring abilities, the spindle, shock, and subframe mounting locations are spot-on between the two.  It seems like the main difference is that the Integra arms have a swaybar mounting hole.  This will be important to me and as such, I will use the Integra front suspension arms.  I do need to put some new bushings in though.

The next pic shows the rack and subframe.  These need to come out obviously.  Before you can do that, you need to take the shifter linkages off the gearbox.  The stabilizer arm (red poly bushing) is easy to take off... the other one... not so much.  I used a small hex bit, and extension, and my 4lb Kobalt hammer, and the roll pin came out.  But it certainly is a PITA.  (disclaimer... some people swear against using a hammer here so use one at your own risk).

And here's a picture of my rack.  Oh car humor, I crack myself up.  This is a power steering rack from an Integra.  In the future I will realize this is not the rack for me, but for now, we can pretend I will use this one with my Integra subframe.

Here's all my crap stored behind and under my Civic.  I need to get rid of this.

Till next time
buhbye
-jkwan