Shaving The Rod

This post is about the simplest and cheapest form of mod you can do to your DC5 Type-R's handling. For those who doesn't know, DC5 suspension department comes in the form of MacPherson strut. Unlike the previous Civic and Integra generation where the Double wishbone suspension are easily tuned, the McPherson layout is totally a different ball game.

I first encountered this issue when I first went to Era Maju to change the wheels back in 2009. The standard camber setting for my car was about -1 front and -2 at the back. Since my Teins come with front adjustable pillow mounts, I guess why not tweak the front further to -2 (or more) to compensate the naturally 'kangkang' rear. Also by having more negative camber at the front, it will give me more grip during corner and reduce the tendency for understeer. Unfortunate for me when the front camber was adjusted to -2.5, the toe-in become so great at +3 on both sides it will be impossible for me to drive. The effect of the positive toe is due to the limited adjustability of the stock tie rods. Frustratedly I had to go back on the normal setting until the tie rod is being fixed, either by shortening it or replace it with aftermarket rods and inverted tie rods (as per the T1R link on the side of this blog).

So after 2 years of not doing anything (HAHAH!) I decided the best way to solve this problem is to meet John of HiperRacing and let him sort it for me...

Check out how 'skema' the front camber all this while..sheesh!

For those who asked what is tie rod, this is it. The gold colored steel.

Ready to be shaved.

John measures the tie rod before proceeding to shorten the tie rods.

John uses a special tool to shorten and rethread the tie rod at the same time. There's no need to take the tie rod off the car and send it to machine shop to shorten it. This would save a lot of time for both customer and mechanic.

Ta-da! It's done! The tie rods were shorten by 10mm in less than 45 mins. Oh in case you're using Tein, 10mm is the most suitable length to shorten the tie rods.

Alignment was done @ Craftmotorsport, Sunway. Front camber now is around -2.5 and rear is almost similar (Need to get the adjustable rear camber kits if I wanna adjust it). Front toe is now at around -1 on each sides.

Looks nice from this angle although the inner tires are crying.

 

Hellaflush? Not quite, but almost there. Hehe.

Black Mamba can grip better in corners, and looks even sexier now!

 

Post Installation Comments:

1. Guess I do not have to elaborate how fun it is taking corners with the new alignment setup. I can accelerate faster in corners without having much understeer like before.

2. The only downside of running negative cambers is that the tires wear faster. Let's see how long does it take for me to change new set of rubbers after this lol.

Costs:

1. RM150 to shorten the rods @ HiperRacing Sunway and RM100+ for alignment and camber adjustment @ Craftmotorsport Sunway.