finally! the arrival of our new test mule. with all the noise going on about the new civic FD2, we couldn’t ignore it further. is it as good as all the reviews made it out to be??
we always hear that the car is raw, and noisy. but after collection of the car, it isn’t that bad. in fact, it is pretty much a good road going car. soft suspension, etc etc. must be too many moons of driving on bilsteins, DMSes & ohlins suspensions that made me immune to jaring rides. suddenly, driving the FD2, is akin to sitting in the toyota crown.
so, as usual, i have to do something stupid, have to test out when i will run out of gas!
i drove it till the fuel gauge went complete blank! and yet i still could drive the car… i am kind of busy this week, have not had time to test how many kays i can do before i hit rock bottom. someday, i will do it; i.e. being stupidier.
so first few mods to do would be to settle the alignment and sort out the standard brakes.
putting the car on the alignment machine tells us that it is way out. we got weird alignment settings all around! it was like honda japan did not bother to adjust the alignment to within spec as they had to produce as many type Rs as possible for the large demand all around the world! we actually got -3 degree of camber on the rear L, and -1 on rear R. Farrr Outtt! we did not expect this from honda… or maybe the car was being throw around in handbrake turns and clipped a couple kerbs before delivery.
anyway, nothing a few suspension geometry components cannot solve
2 camber bolts for the front, 1 on each hole of the knuckle. till we get hold of an offset bolt hole suspension lower casing and camber/castor adjustment strut top mounting, i guess this would suffice.
skunk2 rear camber arms, a cheap solution for the rear camber adjustments. love the gold color here!
for the brake pads, we wanted to put on a set of the new ferodo DS1.11 after hearing them touting about its new siloxane technology, blah blah. but it could not come in time, so we just settled for the regular DS2500 for a combination of road and track use.
we put these in; both F & R, and there was already a marked improvement over brake feel. it has consistent brake feel throughout its operating temperatures and good modulation. and LOTS OF DUST!
Stay tuned, we will be updating the mods we did on this car and also how it performs at the track.