accord CD5- few quick questions

[aaron182]

just have a few questions for all the CD5 owners, past and present and also anyone who can lend a hand.

i have a 1994 accord and have 2 main questions.

1. can anyone let me if these wheels will fit without any troubles (am willing to get guards rolled if needed)?
http://www.tempetyres.com.au/products_closeup.asp?part=Tenzo+Wheels&part_no=1180
not fully sure on the wheels i want yet, however something along those lines.
also anyone know a cheap place to get some wheels and tyre packages, im from newcastle nsw but am willing to goto sydney or as far north as port macquarie.

2. i am looking to lower the accord fairly substantially, but was wondering what height people suggest? and also what make of springs.
only really doing it for the looks, and cant really afford coilovers yet.

the car is pretty much used to get to uni and back and a drive home to port mac every 3 weeks or so (250km approx.)
i know the spring questio0n would have been asked before but ive been upped before for thread jacking, so hopefully this post doesnt cause any barney rubble for me.


i will no doubt have more questions within a day or two, and any positive comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

cheers in advance

[aaron182]

anyone. . .

[JohnL]

I don't really have many positive comments because they might encourage you to do some things with a negative outcome...

My comments, for what they're worth;

Don't lower the car unless you do it properly, especially if you are also fitting wide / low profile tyes. Don't lower it more than 2" maximum, because to do so adversely affects Hondas excellent suspension geometry.

Whether or not a wheel tyre will physically fit is not the most important consideration. Those wheels look quite nice, but 18" is too big, you end up with a sidewall that is too short and handling, grip (and possibly wear) will most probably suffer (especially with wide tyres and uncorrected camber from lowering, and on less than smooth roads). IMO 17" is as big as you ought to go, and if it were mine I'd go no larger than 16".

Don't do anything for looks that also has a negative affect on chassis dynamics...

[aaron182]

I don't really have many positive comments because they might encourage you to do some things with a negative outcome...

My comments, for what they're worth;

Don't lower the car unless you do it properly, especially if you are also fitting wide / low profile tyes. Don't lower it more than 2" maximum, because to do so adversely affects Hondas excellent suspension geometry.

Whether or not a wheel tyre will physically fit is not the most important consideration. Those wheels look quite nice, but 18" is too big, you end up with a sidewall that is too short and handling, grip (and possibly wear) will most probably suffer (especially with wide tyres and uncorrected camber from lowering, and on less than smooth roads). IMO 17" is as big as you ought to go, and if it were mine I'd go no larger than 16".

Don't do anything for looks that also has a negative affect on chassis dynamics...

cheers for the advice mate, im fully open to any and everything hey
i pretty much know nothing about cars, i just drive it, check the oil and water and drop it off to get it serviced haha
but yeah ive seen some with 17" s and a few with 18" and 17 just look much smaller, but if it will affect handling etc greatly, im assuming it may not be worth goign the 18s just for the look? would getting guards rolled help at all?

also with the lowering, i have been told the shocks in it are fine, so im hopeing thats not an issue, although the rear of the car is slightly, yet noticeably lower then the front due to subs etc in the back, and was wondering if that will affect it in any way, shape or form?

cheers again mate, and keep the comments coming :)

[aaron182]

bampity

[JohnL]

but yeah ive seen some with 17" s and a few with 18" and 17 just look much smaller, but if it will affect handling etc greatly, im assuming it may not be worth goign the 18s just for the look? would getting guards rolled help at all?

All that rolling guards will do is allow a given wheel / tyre to fit into the wheel arch (without rubbing or at all) where it previously wouldn't.

IMO from a purely aesthetic viewpoint 17" looks to be a nicely balanced size (visually), and 18" looks too large (especially with a stock sized brake rotor getting lost in the middle of the wheel). From a practical veiwpoint I think 16" (fitted with good high performance tyres in a lower but not excessively low profile, say 55, 50, or perhaps 45) is probably the ideal size for improved perfomance on the road (and most probably on the track as well).

The bigger the wheel the more it will weigh (i.e. have more mass and thus more inertia), and a heavier wheel adversely affects acceleration, braking, fuel economy, ride and handling. Most people probably wouldn't notice much difference most of the time, but the effects do exist.

'Shorter' sidewalls provide less protection for the rim, so the larger the wheel and the lower the tyre profile the more prone the wheel will be to being damaged when hitting potholes etc. The sidewall will also tend to be more prone to damage due to the higher likelihood of it being crushed between the rim and a pothole etc.

Short sidewalls are very stiff (especially when the tyre pressure is also set quite high, common with low profile tyres to help protect rim etc), which in some respects is very good for handling because steering inputs are less vague (less 'twist' distortion between the contact patch and rim with steering inputs), and because lateral and vertical loadings are more rapidly transferred between the contact patch and the rim.

However this also tends to mean that the tyre is more sensitive (i.e. affecting grip) to camber angles because the stiffer sidewall allows less flexibility between the tread and wheel. As the tyre traverses an undulaltion, hits a bump, or the wheel leans with body roll etc, the very stiff sidewall will tend to more strongly inhibit the tyre casing from deflecting in a manner that allows the tread to remain more 'flatly' presented to the road surface.

This can have erratic and abrupt affects on the grip from that tyre, especially on less than perfectly smooth surfaces. It also means the tyre is more sensitive to the static camber being 'correctly' set and to the camber curve of the suspension motion (i.e. how exactly the camber changes with vertical suspension movement as occurs with body roll motion), which are interelated.

Just how much any of this is a concern depends on how extreme the change in wheel size / tyre profile may be. Personally I'd just avoid extremes, which for an Accord (that comes with a stock 15" wheel) I would suggest means no more than a 2" increase to 17".

Personally I do like stiffer sidewalls and relatively high inflation pressures because of what they do for steering / handling etc, but there is a point where this can become excessive and problematic. This is especially so with tyres having very short sidewalls and inflated to quite high psi. At a given (higher) psi, tyre X (with say a 60 profile) will tend to be not nearly as stiff as a much lower profile tyre (tyre Y, with say a 35 profile), so even though both tyres may be inflated to the same pressure, tyre X is much less likely to suffer from problems associated with being too stiff than is tyre Y.


also with the lowering, i have been told the shocks in it are fine, so im hopeing thats not an issue, although the rear of the car is slightly, yet noticeably lower then the front due to subs etc in the back, and was wondering if that will affect it in any way, shape or form?

Stock dampers? A lowered spring should be significantly stiffer than stock to minimise the otherwise increased likelihood of bottoming out the suspension (which has implications for damper life and handling). Stock dampers (especially older ones) aren't going to like springs that are much stiffer than stock, they may be too weak already (even if OK with the OE springs), or completely die more quickly. The existing dampers may cope, but may not.

If you're carrying a lot of dead weight then you do need stiffer springs. All that heavy stereo gear won't help your handling, no matter what you do to the suspension...

What do you want to achieve with these mods? Is it merely for looks, or do you want to improve handling etc? Both? If only for looks then that's fine, but it's very unwise to do anything that lessens the dynamic ability the car already has.

[CB7_OWNER]

JohnL is a hero !...

Basically comes down to whether you want your car for looks or for handling performance.

[aaron182]

Cheers guys,
In particular JohnL

I went to a tyre and wheel shop to get some rough prices, and seen some pretty nice looking 17", and also some good looking 18s.

The only reason i was thinking of 18s and lowering it were purely for looks as i only use it for short trips to and from uni, and the occasional trip back to port mac.
Although from reading your post i've noticed that there can, and quite probably will be some issues with going 3"s up to the 18s.
As i'm at uni, only work casually, and tend to spend any excess money i have on s*it i dont need, i would be up the creek without a paddle if anything happened to the car, so definantly considering the 17s now.

keep em coming
cheers

[JohnL]

Uni in Sydney? That would mean driving at speed on the Pacific Hwy, some areas of which have a very poor surface and just the sort of road that IMO ultra low profile tyres are not very suited for. I'm familiar with this hwy because I live near Wingham (near Taree).

My advice FWIW, for you as an impecunious student (been one myself, barely enough money to buy a beer...), I think your priority should be the most cost effective solution to the Accord high performance tyre problem, with looks further down the list.

For CB7 and CD5 Accords the biggest problem with the stock wheel size is the very limited availaibilty of high performance tyres in the stock 195/60/15 size to suit the stock 5.5" inch wide rims. Nearly all tyres in this size are mostly suitable for shopping duty, and have very soft sidewalls that give poor steering and handling response (some very poor).

By far the best I've yet found (that is available in this size) is the BF Goodrich g-Force Sport, which I highly recommend (reasonably priced too). Even so, the stock 5.5" rim width is really too narrow for the stock 195 size tyre, which ought to be on at least a 6" rim and preferably a 6.5" (a narrower rim makes the sidewall behave as if it were effectively less stiff).

The most practical solution to the high performance tyre problem for Accords is to replace the stock wheels with wheels from a 91 - 96 Prelude, which are 6.5" / 15 with a 55mm offset (vs 50mm offset of Accord wheels). You could probably pick up a set of these for about $200 or so (cheap, freeing up budget for quality tyres), and they open up the tyre choice substantially. With a 6.5" rim you can now fit either a 195/60 (such as the Goodrich above) on a better width rim, or any 205/55/15 high performance tyre in a wide range of brands.

With a good quality high performance tyre fitted, 205/55/15 is an excellent size for general 'high performance' driving. This would be far better than say a 17" wheel fitted with say a 50 or 45 profile tyre of lesser quality. Additionally, a S/H stock Prelude wheel will be a much higher quality unit (stronger / safer / stiffer, which also affects handling) than any of the cheaper aftermarket wheels.

[aaron182]

ohk, so maybe the stockies off a prelude may be the go?
im going to uni at newcastle, although the roads are less then great driving to and from uni, the odd pot hole etc.
Your from Wingham? Im actually from Moorland :D hahahha
Just say from port because no one knows where moorland is haha.

Im thinking there no neeed for the 18's, so i guess its down to the 17s or the prelude stockies,

[JohnL]

Aaron,
It's just an option. If I were looking to change my wheels, I'd be hunting down some Prelude ones (and plan to at some stage). My current quest is to find a much stiffer rear anti-roll bar (sway bar), which ain't easy unless I spend a lot more than I really want to ($290 from Kmac + $60 courier because it's too long to post...).

I actually live at Strathcedar, which is even more obscure than Moorland (but only 15km from Wingham). I had to drive to Newcastle last week, parts of that road are quite rough and dangerous IMO (especially in the wet and you were driving a car with an unforgiving suspension set up, which includes the tyres).

I do think road car tyres require some reasonable amount of sidewall flex or else they will tend to be unforgiving, i.e. more likely to lose grip erratically and more suddenly. This is not a good thing, especially on typical Australian rural roads at typical rural road speeds...

You might want to drop by one day and talk Accords?

[aaron182]

Update. . .
just went down to tempe and got some incubus paranormal 18"s for 1500 with Kuhmo tyres.
will up some pics asap, probs a few hours tops :)

[aaron182]

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m282/epson369/IMG_00531.jpg