With the FK8, gone are the days where you needed to have a full coilover to have a “sporty” car. This of course is thanks to the car coming with a highly sophisticated dual axis front suspension, various levels of electronically controlled shock damping, and an incredible chassis to boot. These three things alone are not the only things responsible for making the Civic such a well-handling car. However, they play the biggest role in it.
For me, one of the most intriguing thoughts about Civic Type R ownership was; Seeing what it was capable of in its stock form, being excited to think about how much better we could make this car and what it would be capable of once modified.
Now I will admit, I’m about 4 years late to the FK8 party and none of what I’m telling you or am about to tell you should come as a surprise. The good thing about getting on the train 4 years late means that everyone has already done all the hard work of figuring out what modifications yield the best results.
Like I had mentioned in my first blog post about getting my FK8, I had a parts list for this car looooong before I had even fully committed to purchasing one. One of the neat things about improving the suspension on this was that you only needed springs, rear camber, and a rear sway bar. This was and still is the recipe for a quick FK8 on track or let me restate by saying this would make the car more than capable. Of course, driver mod is the first thing that needs to be addressed when trying to build a track car.
Let’s forget about all those sophisticated chassis bits, what the cars capable off, and driver mod mumbo jumbo. When it comes right down to it, you just shouldn’t leave any car stock height. People that don’t lower their cars should be sent to an island and live amongst other weenies that don’t like altered ride heights.
Without further ado, lets get into lowering the FK8.
I had done some snooping around on the forum to see what lowering this car was going to entail. I was only looking for a brief overview just to know what I was in for before actually getting the car in the air. After all, I had been lowering cars since 1999 and honestly haven’t really had one that I haven’t been able to knock out in an hours’ time.
On the forum, I stumbled across a DIY from the Spoon/Go tuning guys in southern California. As I began reading their DIY, I began to really wonder how hard this was going to be. Even the mechanics at spoon were saying that for them, being familiar with the FK8 platform and having done this multiple times, it was still taking them an hour just for the fronts. Keep in mind, they have a lift and multiple specialty tools at their disposal. So, for me, on my garage floor, using only jack stands, how hard was this going to be?
Never to be one to shy away from a challenge and never one to EVER let anyone else work on my cars, I dove right in. What happened in the next 8 hours, was quite possibly the worst experience I have ever had working on any car in my entire life. THIS IS NOT AN OVER EXAGGERATION!
I honestly started out trying to make a step-by-step DIY. I ended up being so angry, hot, and frustrated that many pictures and steps were missed. I will try my best to explain step by step process. I will also direct you to Spoons DIY write up that helped me a lot. There is just no easy way to do this, and if it’s your first-time plan on taking a full day or more.
Below is the link to the Spoon write up.
https://www.civicx.com/forum/threads/spoon-springs-install-diy.27506/
It’s also worth mentioning that there is another way that uses a different approach than spoon method. I have no experience with that way, but it’s said to be easier than the spoon method. It involves undoing the ball joint. I have no further info on this method and have no experience with it. Lowering this car is just a pain and I hope to never do it again.
Below is the car as it sits stock from the factory.
Next are the parts I’ll be installing:
- Swift springs for the Fk8 chassis, these supposedly lower the car the most at 1 inch.
- SPC camber arms. I’m slightly disappointed because the older version of these were billet. I’m not sure what these are, the build quality seems fine and I haven’t heard of anyone breaking the newer version. Im still disappointed though because I like the way the billet ones look. SPC makes the Eibach ones and those are billet, so im not sure if maybe that had something to do with it. Either way the NON billet SPC arms are still pricey. I wish I would have gotten the Eibach ones (strictly for aesthetics)
Start out first with jacking the car up. The 10th gen chassis can be somewhat difficult to jack up because there isn’t a place in the front under the radiator to jack from. There is a jack point on the front subframe towards the rear (about where the firewall is). The trick to getting a jack in there is… You need to take another jack and place it on either the passenger or driver side of the car where the side jack points are. Get the car high enough so that the front wheel of the side you are jacking is slightly off the ground. Now take a second jack and slide it under the car from the front of the car, aligning it with the red H emblem. You will have to go far back with the jack to reach the jack point on the subframe. You can sort of see below how I have the jack under the car.
It will also be a good idea to jack the car up as high as it will go. I’m using jack stands that are much taller than the average ones you get at the auto parts store. You will be rolling around on the floor a lot and it will be very helpful to have the car as high as possible.
The jack point in the rear is slightly to the left of the muffler/tailpipe.
I have waited my whole life to legally be allowed to have red Brembo’s.
I started with the rear first which is unusual for me. Normally I like to get the hard stuff out of the way first. I knew that the front was going to be so bad, that when I finished the front I didn’t want to have anything else to do after.
While the rear is very easy to install the springs on, installing the camber arms is stupid. The gas tank and rear subframe blocks all access to easily reach the 17mm inboard bolts holding the arm on. The best tool I would suggest you use, would be a 17mm ratcheting wrench. You can’t fit a deep socket in the small amount of space and, since I don’t have ratcheting wrenches, I had to use a shallow 17mm.
Because of this, I was only able to turn the bolt what seemed like half a millimeter each turn before hitting the ratchet on some part of the rear sub frame, gas tank or suspension part. I did completely unbolt the rear ride height sensor to help gain more access to the inboard bolt. I did not have any error codes come on either, just make sure you remember the orientation of which the height rods go.
The driver rear arm was the hardest, the passenger one was slightly less hard only because the fuel filler tube is not in the way.
If you are doing just the springs, the rear is super easy. Just unbolt the sway bar endlink from the lower control arm and the lower control arm bolt where it attaches to the knuckle. Once you have removed those two bolts, the lower arm can swing down, and the spring will easily pop out.
Below you can see the difference between the rear OEM and the rear Swift. Make sure when you take the OEM springs out, before installing the swifts, you swap the rubber isolators and locators form the OEM and install them on the swifts. Top rubber on top and bottom rubber on bottom do not mix them up.
It is also a good idea when doing unfamiliar work on cars only do one side at a time, this way you can reference the side you haven’t touched to see how it is assembled form factory.
FUCK the front! I have no other pictures until now. Below is what the front suspension will look like after you have taken the front strut out.
For the front, you must remove the metal under tray and the complete plastic under splash shield. There might be a way to do it without removing the plastic under tray, make your life easier and just remove everything. Like I mentioned earlier in the post, it’s best to get the car as high off the ground as possible when placing it on jack stands.
As you can see below. Parts, nuts, and bolts are everywhere. FUUUUUUUU, I wanted to take a bath with a toaster. You can also see that I did completely unbolt the lower control arm only leaving it attached at the ball joint.
The FK8 (as with many other newer cars) has a guide pin that is used in assembly to help aid in joining the chassis and front sub frame. This part can easily be removed to allow you a little bit more negative camber. With the pin removed, you will only be able to achieve a max of about -1.6 to -1.9 degrees of camber per side.
Below is what it looks like off the car. the Pin is pressed into the top of the strut mount.
To remove it. Simply thread a 14mm Honda nut on.
Then use a socket wrench, electric ratchet, driver, or like in my case… an impact. Continue to tighten the nut onto the guide pin by turning the nut right (clockwise) this will allow the pin to spin and loosen the knurls that it is pressed in with. Once it spins a few times you’ll be able to easily remove the pin. The guide pin is now trash and will not ever be needed again.
Make sure your helper is paying attention when you zap the trigger. The pin is pretty snug and requires a lot of force to initially break free.
My helper was not paying attention.
There ya go buddy, two hands.
And out spins the pin
Below you can see up close the knurls of the pin that hold it into the strut mount top hat.
Next is some ghetto way of making the right tool for the job. Of course, there is a proper tool for this, and it is called a “pass through” ratchet. In the past I have used the pass-through ratchet on the 8th gen when I installed the swift springs on that. However, Ever had broken them a few days prior and we hadn’t replaced it yet.
If you don’t have one, or don’t want to invest in one, just do what I did.
This will allow you to insert an Allen wrench to stop the shock shaft from spinning as you remove the nut holding the strut top hat on.
As you can see below, make sure you use spring compressors before you start to remove the nut holding the top hat on. The spring is under tremendous tension and if you unthread the nut holding the top hat on without using the spring compressors it can be extremely dangerous.
To make this installation as complete as possible, you can order some OEM Honda vinyl stickers. These cover the hole in the strut tower where the guide pin was that we removed to achieve more negative camber.
You can see below the hole that is left once the guide pin is removed. Any dirt, debris, water, dust, or any other sort of particle can get into your engine bay if this is left open. Plus, it looks much cleaner to not have two random holes on your brand-new car.
Each sticker is less than a dollar from Honda and it’s always cool to get OEM Honda parts.
I know I skipped a lot of steps. This really was one of the worst times I have had working on a car. The amount of engineering in the front suspension is what makes this so incredibly difficult to accomplish. Even a regular 10th gen would be easier to lower, It’s the FK8 unique dual axis front that complicates things. There are tons of stuff that needs to be removed. I would say that you are going to need to remove just about everything bolted to the front spindles. Brake guides, sway bar end links, dual pivot arm, brake line bracket, electronic shock plug, and a few other things that I don’t even know what the actual names of them are.
Below is what the car looks like on the ground. Keep in mind that I haven’t even driven it at this point and after a few hundred miles the springs will settle and be slightly lower. The stock 20-inch wheels do make it look like more than a 1-inch drop. Once I get wheels (18×9.5+45 265/35 tires) there should be a slight gap between the tire and the fender. As the car sits right now, I have already put about 1500 miles on it, driven to California, went to GMR, and some back roads through Malibu. Tires/wheels do not rub anywhere on the stock 20’s.
From these angles, I think it looks pretty good. Obviously having it a bit more flush would be nice. Remember though, it’s a TYPE R, it’s already cool.
From the back though, I’m not sure it looks that good. the hellasunk front is kinda ugly.
The rear is set to -2.2 degrees of camber
Below are some shots from the other day. On the day I was going to take these pictures, I got a speeding ticket as I was getting on the freeway. 83mph on the freeway, first speeding ticket in at least 10 years. Oh well, that’s the price you must pay for having such a wild-looking car.
Pictures below, the car has ~2000 miles on the springs.
We’ve been getting a lot of thunderstorms rolling through Las Vegas lately, so the other night Angie and I went out storm chasing in the Type R. By the time we got to a dark enough spot the storm had already passed. I rushed to quickly try and get a few pictures with lightning in it, I only got one. Because of the lack of lighting, I decided to try and do some light painting with my phone’s flashlight.
When I had originally gotten the car, I was all set to order these and throw
them on immediately. However, I stumbled across a YouTube video of someone that
had installed swift springs on their stock Type R with the 20-inch wheels and
they had mentioned how uncomfortable it was. It was so uncomfortable that they
instantly ordered 18’s and got a larger thirty-five sidewall tire. They
mentioned this fixed a lot of the issues with comfort (obviously) but watching
this made me hesitate purchasing springs before I got 18’s.
After a few weeks of putting it off. I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to
lower the car. I just couldn’t handle the way it looked, plus it just didn’t
feel right having a completely stock car.
I caved and ordered the springs with hopes that maybe the guy on YouTube
just had a low tolerance for discomfort. A few days before installing the
springs I had an “ah ha” moment. I thought, you know what, I bet the
dealership had like 50 psi of pressure in the tires. Sure enough, the tires had
50 psi in them from the factory. Before I even lowered the car, I dropped the
tire pressure to a normal 35 psi. I wasn’t concerned with fuel mileage, not like
it would really make much of a difference. What it did do was… It made the
car so much smoother to drive, less jarring when hitting small bumps or
unevenness in the road.
With the car lowered on the swift springs, and tire pressure at 35 psi the
car feels as it did the day I rolled it off the lot (with 50 psi of pressure in
the tires) Basically there is no change in comfort level while driving and I’m
even more excited for it to get even better when I eventually get 18’s.
Because of the swift’s higher spring rates, it does make the car feel a bit
vague when in comfort mode. Nothing undrivable, but you can tell that the
damping is too soft. When in sport mode and you hit some larger bumps, it can
feel a bit bouncy because the shocks are just ever so slightly still under
valved. I’m only mentioning this just to mention it. I seriously doubt anyone
would notice the ever so subtleness of it. Rest assured though, when in +R
mode, the car is amazing. It’s stiff for sure, but it also feels like it is
supposed to be that way.
If you come from the golden era of 90’s-00’s Hondas and you are used to
adding springs on to your car and feeling a tremendous boost in performance.
Keep in mind, the FK8 is already an amazing handling chassis and doesn’t leave
much room for improvement. What I mean by this is, if you put these or any
other lowering spring on your car… Don’t expect it to completely blow you
away with handling improvements. Don’t expect to get in the car and take turns
20-30mph faster than you could before.
Once again, I’m sorry this wasn’t a more detailed how to. It was just so
incredibly hot when I was attempting to do it and I was so frustrated that it
wasn’t easy like any other car I’ve lowered before. I feel though, that if you
read my write up and the spoon one, it will give you enough info that you
should feel pretty good about attempting to do you own. I would honestly plan
on a full days’ worth of work, at least 8 hours of wrenching. That doesn’t
include food/bathroom breaks, going to the parts store to get tools/supplies.
It would also be a good idea to source everything prior to the day you are
going to attempt it. Get all the tools, jacks, jack stands, etc.
As promised in the last few FK8 posts I still have more content coming.
Please bear with me as I attempt to keep the content flowing as much as
possible. As the possibility of a second lockdown looming over us, my job has
begun to become increasingly stressful. Sometimes I just want to come home and
lay on the couch.
Thanks, as always for reading my ramblings. Thanks also for sharing with me
the joy of my Civic Type R. I truly hope that my journey with the chassis can
help others along the way. I know for some the Civic Type R is their introduction
to the wonderful world of having motorsports as a hobby. Hopefully, you can
learn with me as I go along or at the very least get some real unbiased
opinions that aren’t heavily influenced by fucboi hype or cool guy clout.
If you have any questions about this post or any others… Please don’t
hesitate to reach out to me. Email me at Billy@Functiontheory.com, hit me up on
Instagram @Functiontheory, or just comment on the post below and I’ll get back
to you.