Osmodious

OK, I'm not a newbie to the auto upgrade scene, nor am I a newbie to forums, so I have at least an idea of what I am trying to accomplish with my upgrades and how to search for info here.

The thing is I haven't seen a lot of opinion comparing various brands of upgrades, so am not certain which direction to go. For example, I am familiar with Comptech and am aware that they produce quality components...I am also aware that they are pricey.

Anyway, I am contemplating doing some suspension upgrades to my 2006 6MT, as well as eventually looking at performance upgrades. Since someone will state the obvious response "It depends what you want the car to do..." let me qualify that up front. I enjoy driving, and driving fast. I like a car that is tight but still compliant for street use (I do live in NJ, land of the pothole). It is important that the car be well balanced and corner as flat as possible while still maintaining a modicum of ride quality (I might have to take my mom somewhere, you never know!). I do not have much opportunity to 'track' my cars, so outright grip is not as important as a nice, balanced compromise for ride and handling.

OK, that said, let me outline my grievances with the stock chassis: not enough roll control, godawful tires (easy to remedy, but what is the maximum treadwidth and wheel width I can do?), WAY too much dive and squat (cop followed me 50 miles because of brake-dive once...I didn't slow down THAT much, but the dive made it look like I'd been going 150), no LSD, overall lack of stiffness in the bodyshell.

Obviously, a new anti-roll bar (swaybar) setup would be good...but I've really only seen rear bars and don't know the relative merits of the Comptech vs. other (cheaper) brands. Ditto for chassis bracing...at least I know there are strut-tower braces (which is best price/performance?)...don't know about rear braces or some sort of underbody chassis stiffeners (which I would like). Does anyone even make a front bar for this car? etc...

As far as springs/struts/shocks...well, I've read about the A-Spec but it's all contradictory. How about the Comptech springs/Koni shock set up vs. A-Spec? Coilover is a bit too extreme for my needs, but does anyone know of a good balanced (price/perf) set up? Again, flat handling with a decent ride and less dive are my main objectives here.

Oh...if I get the A-Spec or Comptech springs, are the adjustable camber links required? I would probably be requesting .5-1 degree of negative camber anyway, but if it is much more than that...well, you know.

Finally, I've noticed that the pickings are pretty slim for reasonably priced wheels for this car. No idea why that is, but it is...everything I've looked at is $450+. I'd be most interested in 17's (18's are a bad idea around here...and too heavy anyway), at least 8" wide (can we do more? what would the offset be?), lighter than 20lbs each (preferably under 18) and reasonably priced. Ideas here would be appreciated as well.

I think that does it for now...sorry this was so long winded, I guess I was trying to save some of the inevitable responses asking about what I have checked so far. As for brands...well, I know that people defend their faves to the death, but I HAVE no fave, so don't be afraid to provide any and all reasons for/against any brand! I only mention Comptech so much because my dealer carries it and will guarantee the work and the Honda warranty...they also implied problems should I use others (Don't worry, I'm aware of federal laws regarding this, but would like to avoid the fight with them...besides, Comptech has a good rep).

Thanks for any and all responses!

Os.


OSMOCorp
"If it ain't OSMOcorp, it probably exists!"

jlukja

First of all, congrats on your purchase and welcome to Acurazine.

Now, all your questions are a lot for one thread to handle. And, despite you saying that you know how to search here, apparently you haven't searched. There are tons of threads comparing different sway bars, different intakes, different headers, tons of opinions on various suspensions and wheels. Its all a bit much to rehash and discuss all in this one thread. My suggestion would be to break your requests down to the basics and then search on those.

For instance, start with the rear sway bar. Here is an existing thread comparing Progress to Comptech https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27164
If you have additional questions or would like a clarification of a point that was made, post it in that thread. Another example is this thread https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25172 which compares Comptech/Tein springs to the Koni Coilovers. If you have a related question or comment then post it there. As to rims, you can post a thread in Wheels, Tires, & Suspension asking for suggestions based on your criteria.

As you can see there is a lot of discussion on each topic and one of my jobs as moderator is to ensure that the threads stay topic specific. So get friendly with the search feature and good luck.

Osmodious

I've done some searching (at other sites as well), but didn't come up with a whole lot because most peoples' goals are different than mine. I couldn't possibly care any less about how it all looks, which is what they all list as their first priority ('wheel gap'). And while they do mention ride quality (in rather vague terms), NOBODY has mentioned a blessed thing about dive and squat...which are my primary concern. Also, that particular thread concentrated on coilovers, which is a route I am not interested in following.

As to the sway bar discussion, well, yes that was helpful and I have read it before. However, nobody addressed the FRONT swaybar question in any of the threads I found. And the issue of warranty issues with the Progress bar were not addressed.

Finally, I am aware there is a wheel & tire forum, however that is again focused on appearance while I am interested in performance...and this is the performance forum. I know I shoved a lot into that post, but I thought having it all in one thread would likely get me responses from the folks who have REALLY done the whole shebang and understand the inter-relationships of all the components.

So, in closing, I wasn't trying to be a dork, I'm just trying to get a 'whole package' perspective (after all, in many of the targeted component discussions, there are questions about what other parts have been or will be installed, I'm trying to get that all out in one spot)! So, in that sense, my hope was that this thread WOULD be 'topic specific', the topic being a 'whole package' view of the TSX suspension upgrade world!

There's always those handful of folks who really know a car inside and out, have tried lots of different parts and can provide that overall opinion that I seek...at least that has been my experience with my Mini Cooper, my A4's and my Vette forums. I'm hoping one of them will lend their considerable insight to my topic.

Thanks for the links!

Os.

Reach

Don't get snippy.

Lots of newbies come on and start ridiculous threads. It makes me, and everyone, not want to answer them when there are 20 questions in one post and the user has a post count of 3. I know you want info, but we really have covered body roll, brake dive, turn-in, understeer, and more in the suspension forum. If we were all to do it your way, we would each just get 1 thread for our specific car and goals and everyone could weigh in on their opinion there. Sadly, there's no use for other members in a thread titled "Osmodious's car". (Or "Reach's car" for that matter).

Regarding what seems to be your specific questions around ride, handling, and performance, my advice is unfortunatly going to be something it doesn't sound like you want to hear: coilovers. I tried everything at first shy of new shocks to improve my handling: rsb, tower bars, lower bars, and different types of each. A rear sway bar helps a lot with the stock suspension, but it wasn't until I went with the Tein Flex coilover system that I really got the rock-hard turning performance I was after. Additionally, its a highly adjustable coilover, from dampening to height, anything is easy to change. You might also want to look into the Tein CS system. If those were out when I was looking, I would have considered them seriously as well.

You don't hear a lot about front sway bars because there is only 1 on the market (that I know of). Its made by H&R, it costs a boodle, and doesn't seem to do that much to improve things. That's all I know of it.

I'm by far no expert either automotively or on the TSX itself, but I do know a bit, and I've tried a lot of bolt-on parts. I got 99.9% of the information I used to make my purchasing decisions from this forum. I wholeheartedly encourage you to continue searching topic specific threads to find further answers to what you need. Its all in there, you just have to read between the lines sometimes.

minkl81

iTrader: (2)

wow any cliffnotes of all these posts??

JTso

iTrader: (2)

There is a thread regarding various mod ratings. I can't seem to locate it at the moment but will try again later...

hrj

iTrader: (1)

here you go

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33868

waTSX

waTSX

Osmodious, what Reach and jlukja said. There is an absolute plethora of modding info on this site, and a lot of very knowledgeable members who'll be glad to share their smarts. Three of them have offered you advice in this thread alone. You just have to go about it in the right way. If you can think of it, and it involves an Acura, chances are very good it's been covered before, ad nauseum. Searching is your friend.

I'd start with the threads jlukja and hrj_1985 provided and then go from there.

Good luck and welcome to AZ. It's a great site.

Osmodious

Thanks for the responses...I'll do more searching (got to wade through a lot of crapola to find the pearls, though...honest, I HAVE tried!) and try to post some more targeted questions as I get more familiar with the pros/cons of the various mods. Again, my tastes and experience are somewhat different than most people, so I will apologize in advance if I ask a rehashed old question in the hope of getting more pertinent insight!

Thanks, again...

jlukja

I do agree that you have to wade through a lot of crapola. Sometimes, if i don't know what term to search on, I just page through the threads in Tires, Wheels, & Suspension subforum and look at the titles. I won't jump down your throat if you ask a questions. Hopefully, if its been asked before then someone will post a link to the previous thread (at least thats how I try to do it).

jeffbatt

The Mugen 5-way adjustable suspension is excellent. It is not height-adjustable, but OEM quality and offers 5 levels of damping stiffness. I know what you mean about nose-dive, this will massively improve that. You can also stiffen the rear to get a similar effect to a rear sway bar, without dealing with the extra stress the sway bar would put on the chassis.

Not sure what you mean about the body not being rigid. It probably makes many "tinny" sounds that your A4 did not, but I believe objectively, the body is stiffer than the current A4 (B6/B7), previous gen 3-series, and previous gen C-class (don't know how it stacks up against the new models).

There are relatively few chassis stiffeners out there that will make much difference. I currently have the Comptech front shock tower brace, which looks great and is lighter than stock, but doesn't make the car much stiffer. I also have a Cusco subframe brace which doesn't do anything dramatic, either. I have a trunk brace on order from Japan. Based on a previous car, J's racing fender braces probably would help more than anything, but they are a pain to install and may compromise safety in a front-end collosion.

Again, I think the body shell of the TSX is actually quite stiff, but the car probably has less than 1/2 the sound deadening of the Audi.

Early Mini's actually were really bad in terms of body-stiffness, correct? They had to reinforce the base of the A-pillar area because the windshields of several cars actually popped out due to body-flex, or so I read.