Dembo

I decided today to have a go at trying to get the adjusters to budge myself before getting an alignment done. Rears were a piece of cake. Front camber was easy enough, gave up trying to do the left toe but did the right one (that shouldn't be too much of an issue).

That leaves the caster. Maybe I'm missing something, but you need to undo the locking nut which is at the top and it's impossible to get anything more than a weedy spanner onto it, which was never going to do the job. I did put a socket on a breaker bar on the other end and turn it enough to get it to crack, so that suggests it will work for somebody that knows what they're doing.

Is there some trick to getting a proper socket onto it?

I also tried to undo one of the shock bottom bolts, but couldn't get that to move. So it seems I might have to leave changing the shocks/springs to the professionals if I decide to do that.

Of course I've now messed everything up. The car seems to want to oversteer when turning right but not when turning left. Quite good fun in fact.

mikey k

nice geo set up

It is the caster bolts that seize first, then the front camber, really bad cases the rear cambers go as well

What is happening is you are cracking the corrosion but grinding the bolt shank in a circle preventing it dropping down. The caster bolts on my 53 plate were exactly the same.

Did you manage to get the caster to change?

Dembo

I didn't persevere, just pulled until it cracked. I expect I could keep going and it would turn, but that's obviously not the correct way and I don't know if it would actually move position and change the caster. Maybe I could wedge the spanner on the nut end against something and turn the bolt and undo it that way. Hmmmm.

It's just so frustrating that it's designed in a way that means you can't get a decent tool to it. The manual even specifies a torque setting - how are you meant to use a torque wrench?

mikey k

Normally with the top slackened off you can turn the bottom to adjust the caster. If you wind the nut off the top of the bolt it should drop down! If not it is partially seized, it will proably allow you to crack it and turn it for adjustment if not too far go.

Both on my 53 went solid, not long after I tried adjusting then, I think you end up grinding the corrosion in to other unaffected parts of the bolt and sleeve making it worse!

Dembo

Well.. more by luck than judgement I discovered you don't need to undo the impossible to get to nut, just undo the bolt. The caster one seems to be different in that it's a normal bolt through the middle of an outer bit which contains the cams. So I just undid the bolts, which came out easy and the adjuster could move fine.

I've gone further than yesterday in that I've now removed all the bolts from the front and given them a good greasing (including the upper arm and shock). Most of them were okay, but the camber bolts had quite a bit of rust.

Still can't budge the front left toe adjustment, which is a worry (thankfully not a new wishbone worry).

Phoenix S2k

I've just returned from Chris Franklins at Centre Gravity. I will post a full write up later on . Chris and Jane really are as good as everyone else has said they are.
I had one offside front caster and one rear offside camber seized.(On an 04 car ) Chris managed to free them eventually. All regreased and reset to non honda settings. I'll give you my impressions more fully once I've had chance to play on the twisty stuff. But even with the small changes made there is a noticable difference.

All cam bolts were marked prior to disassembly and put back as found initially. A good idea for anyone wanting to check if their bolts are seized.

Thanks again to Chris and Jane for a really first class job. I would recommend them 100% to anyone wanting to get their suspension checked or sorted. If you havent had the bolts done, then do them NOW before it's too late and you end up spending a fortune to sort it out.

Dembo

Mine's a 99, so should have been horribly seized by all rights. I wonder if the early models were properly greased from the factory as it seems a lot of people with the problems are with newer cars. It's unbelievably poor that a 2 year old car like yours would have these sorts of issues. I'm just staggered that Honda continue to have such a reputation for build quality when they do things like this.

Having said that, there was no evidence of any grease on any of my bolts. It does live in a garage, and the previous owner kept it in a garage too, so maybe that's a big factor.

It's such a relief to find mine is okay. After the recent misfire problems, I'd honestly decided that if the suspension was seized up I would just sell up and have done with it.

I greased up the rear bolts after posting before, and decided to try to get the geometry vaguely consistent left and right. I think I got about the maximum rear camber (which is kind of the "default") and some toe in. I went for a test drive expecting it to still be all over the place and only driveable with extreme care, but not only did it feel fine, it felt a lot better than it was before I started all this. I always thought it was probably out, but obviously it was in a much worse state than I thought.

So

mikey k

Do it! Get Chris to corner weight it if you go for coil overs!

Floppy

Does the corner weighting make a massive difference then? I've just had a chat on the phone (think to his wife) and she's given me 2 quotes, one thats a full day with ride height adjustment, damping and corner weight adjustment and the other is just the geo adjustment for 3.5hrs.

There's a big difference in price so I don't know what to go for now...

mikey k

I think it is worth while if you want it really well sorted
Having said that mine quite a few changes in weight distribution