The hatch gets a Yonaka catback exhaust and more low

So, this whole coronavirus social-distancing has motivated me to do some more blogging. Figured I would do an update post on the 1999 Civic DX hatchback. It's coming up on one year of ownership. Currently the car has just over 51,000 miles. Pretty low for a 21 year old car, eh? ;) I've put about 16k miles on it in the 11 months of ownership. One of the (few) bonuses of the coronavirus thing is I'm not adding 400 more miles to the odometer each week. Ha Ha #cuphalffull

Had to drop by JDM Legends after the first round of mods and show Eric what I picked up last year.

Ok, so not a ton happened for months on the car. Just enjoying 41mpg on the daily and carving corners wherever I could. Then, one day while driving home on the freeway, I started hearing my exhaust. I know right!? Weird! LOL You're not supposed to hear the stock factory DX exhaust. Got home and put it up on jacks and turned the car on and got under the car. I found a silver dollar sized hole in the exhaust pipe right in front of the resonator. I bought a cheap Autozone patch and it worked for about 6 weeks. Then right before heading across the country for Christmas break, I pulled the car out of the garage to wash it and the exhaust was loud again and heard it dragging on the ground. No bueno! The patch had completely become useless and my pipe was fully separated and split in two.
I had already purchased a Yonaka 96-00 EK 3dr Hatchback catback exhaust. The problem was it was on backorder with an 8-12 week delivery.

"Pantera Corey" welding up the short patch tube on the stock exhaust while I wait for the Yonaka system to arrive.

My friends helped a brother out. "Porsche Kris" let me use his lift and "Pantera Corey" welded up my temporary exhaust pipe patch section. This all went down January 3rd after we got back from Georgia. My Yonaka catback was on a boat from China, literally, and didn't arrive until February. It finally got installed Feb' 21st. The patch held up great! Thanks guys!

The Yonaka system is a very nice quality system for the price ($240 shipped).

Nice quality welds and stainless steel materials.

Out of the box the Yonaka system was very nice quality. I paid $240 shipped, but that was because it was on backorder from October to February. Hey, I'll take it. I'm on a serious budget! I chose Yonaka for a few reasons. First, I couldn't afford a name brand system like Greddy or the like. Second, I wasn't going to go cheap and buy an eBay system. Third, most eBay systems use the big 4" round "fart can" muffler. That's just not my style. Unless I could get the muffler angled up "JDM style" I wasn't going round muffler style. Fourth, I wanted a more quiet system and preferably an oval shaped muffler. To me the oval muffler is a classier look. Unless I'm going super lightweight, time attack race style with Titanium materials, the oval muffler is better suited for my daily driving.

The Yonaka and the OEM catback systems laid out next to each other. Look at how the OEM has a slight bend after the heatshield. Hmm...

Yonaka catback installed. Notice the fitment...

The removal of the 21 year old OEM exhaust was easy and the install of the Yonaka was pretty straight forward. They supplied new hardware for the system but not the mounting hardware to connect up to the catalytic converter. My issue with the system is the fitment. The muffler ended up being about 1/2" to 1" shifted over to the right. I played around with the 2 lengths of rubber exhaust hangers on the car. The problem was, if I was able to get the system shifted to the left, it was really close to hitting the bottom of the car at the 90 degree bend section.

Overall I'm happy with it. If I can bend the 2 hangers on the muffler at some point to get fitment more on point, I'll do it.

A week or so after doing the exhaust, I finally decided to adjust the coilovers again. I've been wanting to go a little lower on ride height. I ended up only lowering it about 1/2" all around, but it made a difference in the look for sure. I also added about 1/4" more negative camber up front. I think that added about .5 degrees. It is very similar to the rears, which were at -1.1 and -1.4 degrees per the alignment shop. Since I dropped the rear 1/2" as well, it probably gained a couple tenths of a degree of camber. So, everything is probably at about -1.3 to -1.5 degrees. Should give me good handling without sacrificing tire wear. I didn't adjust front or rear toe at all. My tires show very little wear. The Hankook all-seasons are doing awesome!

All in all, I'm loving the hatchie! I've had fun adjusting the coilovers. The car handles great, is economical and I love washing it and keeping it super clean! Enjoy these beauty shots! I want to do some blogs about the top Civic hatchbacks that are inspiring me right now and giving me ideas for my own car. Hopefully I don't go 6 months before posting again. No promises!

Rear shot looking down the side profile for an idea of the fitment and camber.

What's next for the hatchie? I really want to do a front lip. My favorite lips right now are the First Molding, Spoon Type One or Tactical Art. They're all carbon fiber and start at like $400 plus shipping. Soooo, I'll probably end up going with a urethane eBay replica of one of those at first.

Cool top view from the porch. I always hand wash in my front lawn. Loving the white 949 Racing 6UL wheels with the Roma Red. 

Some cool news! I submitted an application to be sponsored by MPC, a tuning shop in the midwest who specializes in machined aluminum hardware, suspension bits and k swap parts. I was accepted! There is a "care package" in the mail. More to come on that! Pretty exciting. My first sponsor!

The "Hechtspeed Hatch" suspension and wheel install

Another big update on the Hechtspeed Hatchback! The last post I talked through the process of selecting the first round of mods for the '99 Civic DX Hatchback. This post is to walk through the install process and initial suspension setup.

Let's see...the first thing I did after enjoying a Junior High awards ceremony and then a 6th Grade graduation ceremony and then lunch at In-N-Out with the middle 2 boys was to take the 949Racing 6UL wheels and Hankook Ventus V2 205/50/15 tires to Burt Brothers Tires in Farmington. They're kind of the only game in town. The tire dude was diggin' the wheels. He knew what they were. He said he started out with Hondas (I assume he meant Civics and Integras) and now has an S2000, which I peeked in the parking lot. Anyway, I got the tires mounted on the wheels and balanced.

949 Racing 6UL wheels (15x7 +36mm) freshly mounted with Hankook Ventus V2 205/50/15 tires.

I rolled them into the garage and leaned them up against stuff so they wouldn't roll away. The bummer was later that afternoon I realized that all the balancing weights had fallen off the wheels.

Ha Ha wheel weights with "not-so-sticky" adhesive

Like, really Burt Bros. I ran them over that afternoon and they re-balanced and added weights again. I wasn't done yet. That night I was mounting up the wheels and found one more wheel with weights sitting on the garage floor. hhhhhhh I put the wheel on anyway and ended up driving it like that to work. I could feel the vibration so I took the car in the next morning before work and had them balance and add weights. Kind of a hassle. I'll be honest, its really nice having a tire shop so close to home, but they've kind of messed up a lot of stuff for me through the years. But, they've been good in making the errors up for me. They have pretty good customer service.

The original visit was quick, like 30 minutes. I got home and got the car jacked up for the first time. The rear was pretty easy. I put my nice Costco jack under the rear subframe. I love my new jack! The 90's Civic's have nice metal tabs at the 4 corners to jack up the car. So, I threw jackstands under the rear tabs. I removed the rear stock wheels/tires.

Step 1, get car up on jackstands and remove stockies

I borrowed a torque wrench from the "Car Nuts" crew. Thanks Shawn!!! You can see it in the picture.

 Quick picture for the driver side front with the stock spring and shock assembly and front upper control arm removed.

I took a picture of the passenger side to see how the factory did the cotter pin on the ball-joint castle nut.

 Here's my attempt at getting the Skunk2 Pro Series Plus UCA (Upper Control Arm) to the same length as the stock UCA. It was about 6.5" from center of the mounting to the end of the ball-joint. Later I ended up changing this just a little to give it more camber. I read that the rear suspension gains more negative camber than the fronts when a car is lowered. So, due to that, I wanted to start off with stock length UCAs. I wasn't planning to go crazy low on ride height and I wanted to gain some negative camber, so that was my plan.

 Here's me measuring the difference in length of the Buddy Club Sport Spec coilover as compared to the stock assembly. It's about 3" shorter. I wasn't sure if this was going to translate into a 3" lowering of the ride height. It ended up lowering it about 2" or so.

Here is the driver side all installed. 

Here's the driver side with the new wheel/tire mounted up. Love the red and white combo!!!

Another shot, this time the passenger side. I made sure to clean the crap out of the wheel well area with brake cleaner and simple clean and a wet rag. 

 I tried finding info on how to remove the rear trunk trim and panels. I couldn't find any. So, I started unbolting stuff. haha I figured it out. I need to make an access door to be able to get to the top of the shock to make damper adjustments. This is much too big a hassle to make adjustments. I have the dampers set to 12 of 20 on the stiffness scale. 20 being the full stiff setting.

Here's the passenger rear installed. I also tried to clean up the whole area, wiping down the trailing arm, lower control arm and stuff. 

For the rear Skunk2 UCAs I measured them and went a little longer than stock knowing that it was going to gain negative camber as I lowered it. The rears ended up being lowered almost exactly 2". I can't remember how much longer, maybe 1/2"? 

Just a quick picture of the garage scene with the tools and parts laying around. Love the little magnet LED flashlights. I have 2 light bulbs for garage lighting, so I rely on an a shop light and these little LED flashlights.

Here is the Hechtspeed Hatchie down on all 4's after the install. 

Here it is a block away at the Church parking lot. The initial setup was too low. It rubbed like crazy up front just driving slowly down my street. So, it needed to be raised up.

I had baseball games to go to so I ended up working on it in the afternoon. It only took me 2 hours to get it back up on jackstands and adjust the front ride height +0.75". The initial camber was very little. So, when raising it up I added 1/8" of more negative camber as measured by how much I moved the UCA in.

Not sure if you can see the black permanent marker marks I made to show where I started from the original setting. I didn't measure but guess this was about 1/8". I loosened the 4 allen bolts enough to tape the ball-joint over the same amount on both sides. 

Last 2 shots for tonight. Raising the car up .75" up front and setting the shocks to 15 of 20 solved all rubbing up front. No fender rolling or trimming of plastic required. Would it look cooler lower with more camber. Yes. But, I'm looking for some practicality and being able to drive the car hard in corners and have 0 rubbing. 

This install all told took me about 12 hours. I did it 100% solo with all hand tools. It was pretty fun. No cussing occurred. Nothing broke. I struggled with the very last rear UCA bolts for about 20 minutes, making sure I did not strip them in the chassis threads. Overall, it was a total success and very satisfying to do myself. 

EK Hatch Wheels and Suspension Parts ordered: How I decided on what to buy

Major Update on the EK Hatch!!!
Wheels are ordered! errr....wheels have arrived!
Instead of Konig Hypergram or Dekagram I went with 949Racing 6UL 15x7 +36mm in Ti02 Titanium Oxide (aka white)!!! After I found this picture of a red EK Hatch DX just like mine with the stock black side molding and side skirt with white Rays Gram Light 57DRs in 15x8 I was hooked. I spent a couple days trying to figure out how I could make those wheels, which are $1200 for a set happen. I was in love with that look (the red with white and that wheel design). I knew I wanted to spend money on quality suspension (which I get into below) and so I needed to find a more affordable white wheel I loved. The Konig Dial In was the first one I looked at but I didn't like the spoke and wheel design. It's cool, just wasn't loving it. I had trouble finding 6UL wheels, 949Racing.com was basically almost sold out in any color.

949Racing 6UL wheels in 15x7 +36mm 10.6lbs have arrived at the Hechtspeed "shop"

I found FlyinMiata.com had 15x7 in white. I texted my wife right then a picture of the red and white EK hatch with the Gram Lights and then a picture of a blue EG hatch with white 15" 6UL and asked if she could photoshop the 6UL onto the red EK. She's so talented!!! Check it out!

Roma Red EK Hatch with white Gram Light 57DR

Blue EG Hatch with Ti02 Titanium white 949Racing 6UL 15"

949Racing 6UL Titanium white (Ti02) photoshop onto a Roma Red EK Hatch DX

I just ordered up suspension parts! I'll put the details below...
As I said in my previous post I have been doing a bunch of research on what coilovers to buy. I narrowed my final 3 down to Buddy Club Sport Spec, K-Tuned K1 and Ksport Kontrol Pro. These were all about $900 for the set. See below for my comparison spreadsheet I put together to help me in my decision:

The Hechtspeed EK Hatch coilover comparison

In my research I tried to boil down the descriptions on the many websites into a couple key metrics so I could compare my options. I wanted to know spring rates, dampening adjustment, twintube or monotube, price and any other key features. The Ksport Kontrol Pro was the cheapest. I found it for $740. But, it has the softest spring rates (not by ton mind you, they were 9.8k / 5k) and the most dampening adjustment (36-way). I don't necessarily consider more "clicks" better. Ksport is a decent company that has been around for probably 10 years. But, nothing stands out here except the price and I was not wanting to make my decision based purely on that.

The second option and the one I was leaning toward the most was the K-Tuned K1. The K1's have 10k/6k spring rates and probably the most YouTube video reviews out of the 3. K1's have 32-way adjustment. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Speed Academy guys did a nice series on the black EK coupe K swapped track/street project and they had good things to say about this one. They ended up swapping to K2's (20k/16k spring rates) I guess because the car ended up more a track car than a street car.

The third option was Buddy Club Sport Specs. Spring rates for the Buddy Clubs are 10k/7k and 20-20-way adjustment. The Buddy Clubs are "Made in Japan" and have the longest history as a company. Initially I found these for $925 on deftmotion.com. I had already chosen Skunk2 UCAs from jhpusa.com and asked jhpusa if they would price match. I was happy to get an email the next morning saying they would price them at $898 for me. If you look on their site now they are priced at $898 for everyone! Your welcome! Go check them out JHPUSA Buddy Club SPORT SPECS

All 3 systems use Monotube shock design. This was one of the final details I found a few days ago. I google searched "monotube vs twintube" after I started noticing some kits with the two different optioons and learned some helpful information. I learned that monotube shocks are better suited for performance driving while twin tube are better for ride quality. The reasons are responsiveness to bumps, fade of the performance of the shock as it performs over time and long term consistency of that performance.

strutmasters.com Monotube vs Twin tube shock article was super helpful

The Strutmasters.com article is short and sweet (unlike my blogs)! CLICK HERE The last comment on mono vs twin tube is it appears some of the cheaper coilovers utilize twin tube as a way to give very lowered cars a more comfortable ride and save on cost. Neither of which are what I'm looking for.

I found a really helpful article from the Speed Academy guys called "Track Alignment Specs: EG/EK Honda Civic & DC2 Integra". Not only does it give some good pointers on setup but helps explain what the Honda unequal length double wishbone suspension is doing when you're pushing your Honda hard in corners.

Speed Academy EG/EK/DC2 Track Alignment article

One of the helpful tidbits was that my hatch does not need a lot of initial static camber because as the unequal length double wishbone suspension compresses, it gains negative camber naturally. Give the article a look and CLICK HERE

So, what did I choose? I went with the Buddy Club Sport Specs from jhpusa.com!!! So excited!!!

Buddy Club Sport Spec coilover kit for 92-00 Civic and 92-97 Del Sol

I think the blue springs and red shock body color scheme is cool!

I went with Skunk2 Pro Series Plus UCAs (Upper Control Arms) for camber adjustability as well as the benefits of having more direct and solid mounts and bushings. I ended up getting the rears from jhpusa.com along with the Buddy Clubs. They were not offering (even though I asked and they said they couldn't) free shipping for the front arms so I ended up finding those on kseriesparts.com for the same price with free shipping. No biggy. The internet now allows me to drop $1271 in a matter of minutes with no hassle.

Skunk2 rear Pro Series Plus camber kit

The Skunk2's have a great racing heritage with the Honda/Acura crowd. The Skunk2 rear control arm is different than all the other 88-00 Civic choices. The difference is in the construction and design of the ends of the arm. All the other designs are a "butt-welded" bushing case to the adjustable middle section at a 90 deg angle. But, these Skunk2's have a beefier and smoother transition. The butt-welded variety just looked weaker and a potential crack point.

The Skunk2 fronts have camber adjustment from the bottom for easier access. Here is the blurb from Skunk2: Each Pro Series Plus Camber Kit includes three-piece, low-deflection, polyurethane bushings that eliminate the pre-load typically associated with rubber bushings, allowing the arms to pivot freely, dramatically improving handling performance. Pro Series Plus Camber Kits also feature Skunk2s all-new, one-piece, forged Pro Series Ball Joints, which feature low-profile top plates for additional clearance between themselves and the shock towers, higher clamping loads for no-slip performance, and a unique design that allows for maximum adjustability. 

So, there you have it. I'm super excited to get all this stuff installed! Can't wait for how the car is going to look and how its going to handle.