I have a 2000 Honda Civic EX. I am looking to upgrade my suspension, have been looking at struts and sway bars. Do lower control arms (rear) have much impact without additional improvements? Total beginner, any help will be appreciated.

 

Give me a little time... I just typed up a huge in-depth description of what everything does and what you should look for in an upgrade, then i accidentally clicked away from the page and lost everything so now I have to type it all up again

 

Okay, let's try this again... here's a fairly in-depth look at suspension:

Springs:
The generally assumed rule for springs is that the higher the spring rate, the less the car will roll in the turns, and the better it'll handle. Well, the problem with that is public roads are chock full of imperfections. If you have the highest spring rate you can find, if you hit an imperfection at speed, a wheel could potentially lift off the ground. Common sense says that a car's going to travel fastest when all four wheels are on the pavement. The "spring rates high enough to give you kidney damage just thinking about them must be good for handling" idea most likely stems from the fact that in order to avoid bottoming out the suspension, lowering springs have relatively high spring rates. Now, I'm not saying higher spring rates aren't good for handling, but there's a limit to them. Also, the lower the car's center of gravity, the better the car will handle (this is ignoring suspension geometry, but suspension geometry gets very in-depth very fast, so for the sake of simplicity I'm not going to get into that).

Struts:
Honestly, there's not much to say about struts; they control the oscillations, jounce, and rebound of the springs. You basically want struts soft enough to deal with imperfections in the road, but stiff enough to keep the springs in check.

Sway bars:
Basically, sway bars bolt to suspension components (usually the LCA), and keep the suspensions tied together. When the car goes around a turn and the body rolls a little, the sway bar twists a little bit. Thicker sway bars resist this twisting more than thinner sway bars. Generally, you'll want a slightly thicker front sway bar than the rear sway bar. The thicker the rear is, the more the car will tend to oversteer, and a car with neutral handling is going to get around a turn faster than one with the back end hanging out.

Lower Control Arms (rear):
Really, as far as handling is concerned, aftermarket rear LCAs aren't going to do much. The two biggest uses for them are to eliminate some of the negative camber caused by lowering since most aftermarket rear LCAs are shorter than the oem ones, and to mount rear sway bars. I don't believe the oem rear LCAs have sway bar mounting points.

Here's the setups I'd use for two different situations:

"I want the car to handle better":
-Tien S-tech springs (~2" drop)
-Tokico HP struts
-Eibach anti-roll (sway) bars
-Skunk2 or Megan Racing rear LCAs
-Megan Racing front and rear upper strut tower bars

"I want the car to handle like it's on rails" (aka "Money is no object")
-Ground Control coilovers
-KONI "yellows" struts
-Ground Control extended top hats
-Suspension Techniques 15/16" front sway bar
-ASR 24mm rear sway bar
-Skunk2 rear LCAs
-Benen Industries front lower strong-bar
-ASR rear sub-frame brace
-Benen Industries rear lower tie bar
-Benen Industries 3-point front upper strut tower bar
-Password:JDM 4-point rear strut tower bar
-Energy Suspensions master bushing kit

Of course the second setup would most likely cost more than your car lol


Anyway, hope this helps

 

Nice!

Thanks for the info! I will let you know what am planning for feedback.