Topic: How to best stiffen up a stock suspension 4 Dr Honda Accord

We have room left for improvement on our car and are wondering how we best improve iin the area of suspension.

We've got a 4 door Honda Accord (DX) running stock shocks and springs and it has a significant understeer.

We're interested to know what springs, shocks or other items that others have seen / heard of or used to seriously stiffen the car and reduce the body roll and neutralize the car.

Any advice is very much appreciated.

Re: How to best stiffen up a stock suspension 4 Dr Honda Accord

I've got no information specific to your car, but in general, stiffening up the rear will cause more oversteer while stiffening up the front will cause more understeer. As such, the quickest and easiest way to balance out the handling on a FWD car is to add a rear swaybar.

There's bound to be people on this board who know how to make Accords run well, but you might also consider searching an Accord model-specific forum for greater depth of information.

3 (edited by Phate 2014-11-24 11:25 AM)

Re: How to best stiffen up a stock suspension 4 Dr Honda Accord

This question got me to stop lurking.  I have one of these, and am planning on finding one to race when I eventually get around to doing Lemons.  Either that or a first gen odyssey, because race van.

What year accord?  4th (90-93) and 5th (94-97) generation are basically the same chassis.  The suspension under these (and most older hondas) is pretty good, they are just tuned to be "safe family cars" and not.  Lots of travel and soft springs.  More on that in a bit.

First suggestion would be to stick as much rear sway bar under the car as you can fit.  I have a 20 or 21mm bar on my 97 (street car and occasional autocross) and it really changed the balance of the car.  Look at how aftermarket bars like the ST or Progress mount, and you should be able to see how easy it could be to mount something from the junkyard.

There aren't really any oem damper options that will fit these.  Its a double wishbone honda, and it pretty much already has the heavy-duty stuff on it.  Only thing heavier that might work would be the first gen odyssey minivan, which has basically the same suspension.  I have Bilstein HD's on my street car, they're way stiffer than stock, but still not racey in any way.  Other than that, you're basically looking at Koni Yellows (or similar).  Because of how the front dampers mount to the car (clamp-on fork at the bottom, strut bushing at the top), it shouldn't be too hard to find something stiffer/shorter that works.  The rear dampers are going to be more difficult, because they're stupidly long.

Most honda springs are pretty much the same shape, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find something off a newer (read: heavier) car that'll give you some more stiffness.  Also cheap coilover sleeves with stupidly stiff springs are widely available.

Lowering the car an inch from stock, the suspension geometry stays pretty decent (roll centers don't go to shit until the car is around 2.5 inches lower than stock), and you'll have around a degree of static camber.  Mine is lowered a bit over 2 inches.

Assuming you have a 4th or 5th gen (most common ones to find kicking around), look into doing a rotor over hub conversion on the front brakes.  Honda decided to use captive rotors which bolt to the back of the hub assembly, and basically require you to do a wheel bearing job every time you want to change a rotor.  Find a set of 98-99 Acura CL hubs, and you get to have normal brake rotors like a normal car.

Most people just put garbage coilovers on them, slam them to the pavement, stretch 205's onto a 9 inch wheel, and hard park.

Re: How to best stiffen up a stock suspension 4 Dr Honda Accord

Agree with rear sway bar.  We have a 6th Gen with a tree-trunk out back for a sway bar, and combined with a set of Star Specs, it handled much better than any of us thought it would. 

MT or AT?  What year?

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Re: How to best stiffen up a stock suspension 4 Dr Honda Accord

Get $10 generic ricer springs off eBay and slap em on the back. Easy peasy.

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Re: How to best stiffen up a stock suspension 4 Dr Honda Accord

Anton agrees with the MOAR REAR BAR! crowd.

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