The Traccord - 2003 Honda Accord Coupe

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

They are. They harder rubber bushing kit they sell is $166. The PCI sphericals are $180 for just the compliance bearings which is really all I think I'll need on this car. 

I ran hardrace in my crx. never regretted it. 

If you drive it on the street at all you do not want the sphericals. Much noise even from just the inners.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Just from feedback or do they wear enough to clunk? My truck uses big sphericals in place of upper ball joints and they're fine until they're not. 

I know I don't want sphericals in the whole system. I like compliance. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

On the inner ends they will make plenty of noise, because the outer end is already a hard ball joint. Maybe worse when new, maybe worse when worn, which they will do  fairly rapidly. You will hear rotating noise amplified by the arm's harmonic frequency as well as lots of bump/crash bangs.The hard rubber is a great compromise. Your truck has rubber inner ends with the spherical outer upper. Ball joints are not much quieter than sphericals. Hard trunion inner arm ends dissapeared from production cars a long time ago for good reasons. Rubber lasts longer with no service requirement!

Spent a week away from the car thinking about it. What NEEDS to be done? What is simply a want? I still don't want to go faster, I just want to be safe an reduce consumables and make the car easy to service and check over between events. Over and over that led me back to brakes, and specifically rear brakes. The drums work, but after about six track days the shoes have some wear I don't like and the drums are worn enough that getting them over the shoes is rough. I could slap on a new set of drums and continue with the shoes and see if better fronts would slow down rear wear as well (which is my guess) but I already have the rear knuckles on the shelf. Might as well put them on. 

These are aluminum and from an Accord hybrid. The rest of the Accords with disks got iron knuckles. I l'm 99% sure these are the same as TSX knuckles which were all aluminum as far as I can tell. These do have the narrower shock eye spacing of the TSX which is something to keep in mind if you're thinking of using aluminum knuckles in the rear. 

This the is stock drum knuckle with drum and shoes and all of that. 41 lbs. 

This is the disk knuckle with all of it's bits. 35 lbs. Nice little weight loss. 

And here it is in place. Still need to tighten everything. New brakes lines on the way as those are different between the drum and disk cars. I also need to grab a set of disk parking brake cables but it just keeps raining down here and getting them off a car in the JY involves laying on my back in the dirt, or mud as it is now. I'll get them later. 

I need to pull the caliper off and check the parking brake shoes and new disks and pads will go on once I know it all works. It looks like changing these pads requires pulling the whole caliper. Not exactly easy, but a billion times easier than drums. 

Don't you need a different prop valve and master cylinder to go between discs and drums?  Also, isn't there a residual pressure valve to consider?

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

Since this car has a diagonal-split brake system, the master is probably the same between disc/drum and disc/disc.

sweet! 14 lbs lost to help make up for our extra front brake mass! 

Not bad weight reduction.  The 04-07 TL has an aluminum sub frame for the V6.  I wonder if the TSX has one for the K24. 

love these little OEM parts-bin upgrades here and there from the Hybrid.  very resourceful and it looks like there's some genuine advantages to be seen.

I made this for my own purposes, but it's relevant here:

Ran to the junk yard today. Low on Accords. Luckily they had a V6 Coupe which had the parking brake cables and the lower arms that I needed. 

The cables are the last thing I needed for the rear disk conversion, but the arms got washed and then lovingly boxed up to send off to Kingpin Machine to get the compliance bushings replaced with sphericals. 

We'll see how that all works out in the end. Data point, the lower arms weigh 15lbs each. The TL (Pretty sure it was a TL) that I was looking at today has aluminum arms and uprights but they would need be swapped together and then the brake mounting is different. Something to think about in the future though. 

Slammo said:

I made this for my own purposes, but it's relevant here:

I must be the 1% that drums dont give me a hard time. 

I'm not sure if extra semi-sprung weight in the rear is a big deal with this car?  I'd guess the front is where the most benefit/need for reducing that kind of weight is... although, it is concomitantly the more difficult place to realize it... because FWD.

Seth question

Saw a local 2012 Coupe 6MT v6. Asking 9,500. Mileage 80K. What do you think? Are the 3.5L/6MT reliable combo?

The stainless line for the rear came so I installed the second rear knuckle and both lines. 

Turns out the wheel speed sensors aren't the same disk/drum so I need to source those. Just for reference you need wheel speed sensors, soft brake lines, and parking brake cables from a disk car for the conversion. 

This is taking much longer than it needs to. 

The other thing that came in the mail were these little guys. 

I was listening to a podcast where they were interviewing a guy who had worked with race teams all over the world. When he was talking about the 911 GT3 race car he mentioned that the biggest difference between the road cars that Porsche builds and the race cars is that the race cars are meant to come apart. Production cars are built for ease of assembly, race cars for disassembly. 

This got me thinking about the Accord and what I didn't like. My main gripe right now is that pulling the front bumper and fender liners (which needs to happen to access things) takes too long and is an exercise in breaking plastic body clips. The front bumper alone requires removing 11 clips, two phillips screws and two 10mm bolts. That's absurd. 

I spent way too much time reading about dzus and ordered the parts above for a trial run. Drilled some holes today and riveted in the springs.

Test fit with the bumper went perfect. There are some other heads I'd like to try to make removal completely toolless, but these will work to get me where I need to be. I'm excited. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Test fit with the bumper went perfect. There are some other heads I'd like to try to make removal completely toolless, but these will work to get me where I need to be. I'm excited. 

Why not go with a head that works with a tool that fits on your keychain?

mazdeuce - Seth said:

I don't know...it looks like that thing is carrying a lot of unnecessary extra weight.

Putzing around in the Grosh this moring before everyone wakes up. Today is that last day that kid#1 is home from college so next week should be wallowing in sadness during the day instead of hanging out with her. Should get more done. 

I pulled the calipers and pads and disks. Everything looks and feels good. Any thoughts on pads for the rear? Match the ST43's in front and see how it goes? So noisy.......

Going slowly and looking at things. Thinking about them. The parking brake cable bracket is the only thing preventing a nice easy two minutes pad change. That and the fact that you have to screw in the pistons to retract them. The hubs themselves look like bolt on unit bearing pieces. I do wonder if anyone makes "good" ones for the Accord. Studs should press out/in easily and I should do good studs eventually. 

Couple of issues with the new knuckles. First, the ball joints on the ends of the upper links were bad on both sides. I had spares from the drum hubs so I popped them off and swapped. This finger type ball joint remover is the bees knees on this car. 

Next is the wheel speed sensors. For both drum and disk cars the parts catalog shows the short stubby type. The aluminum knuckle cars, the Accord hybrid and the TSX have a longer skinnier type. 

I got out the solder and heat shrink and made the sensors that fit the knuckle plug into the car. I did an afternoon school run (about 50 miles) and the ABS light is still on. I'll reset it after inspection tomorrow so I don't have to wait for the emissions monitors to reset. Crossing my fingers that I can get ABS working. Also, the left rear wheel bearing is loud. Not loose, but heading that way. I'll do both of them. 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

Couple of issues with the new knuckles. First, the ball joints on the ends of the upper links were bad on both sides. I had spares from the drum hubs so I popped them off and swapped. This finger type ball joint remover is the bees knees on this car. 

Next is the wheel speed sensors. For both drum and disk cars the parts catalog shows the short stubby type. The aluminum knuckle cars, the Accord hybrid and the TSX have a longer skinnier type. 

I got out the solder and heat shrink and made the sensors that fit the knuckle plug into the car. I did an afternoon school run (about 50 miles) and the ABS light is still on. I'll reset it after inspection tomorrow so I don't have to wait for the emissions monitors to reset. Crossing my fingers that I can get ABS working. Also, the left rear wheel bearing is loud. Not loose, but heading that way. I'll do both of them. 

 

Good call on ABS, not worth it to chase readiness. 

Nice job on the install!

I was jus telling Mrs. Deuce what I still need to get ready on the car and something occurred to me. When I picked the Accord I did so at least partly because (I thought) that the car was brake pads and tires away from being a functional, if slow, car to drive on track. I still stick by that, because it worked like that, but by the time I'm ready for One Lap the only suspension/brake parts that will be stock are the top hats, the rear links, and the front knuckles. New rear knuckles, brakes shocks/springs. New front arms, upper and lower once that gets made, new shock/spring and completely new brakes. Not quite what I envisioned.