I thought I'd ask the hive their experience on how to return a hilarious slammed, lowered 94 Civic to it's stock suspension. Quick background, a good kid I know what gifted a 1994 Civic Dx from a family member so he could commute to the local junior college. He knows that trying to maintain the hooptie lifestyle presently installed on the Civic is a non-starter. He's a broke college freshman, mom is enduring cancer treatment and dad is not present. A couple of questions.

Will a set of 14x5 (4x100 lug pattern) wheels and tires (steel Honda rims) fit on this car? From my internet search, the Dx came with 13x5 wheels. I found a nice set of 14x5 on FB Marketplace in good shape and newish tires. I'm assuming this isn't a big issue and the used 14" will work.

Secondly, the previous owner installed MostPlus adjustable coil over struts (962011) that appear to drop the car 1-3" and there's a serious, ridiculous camber.

Option 1 - find the tool for these and adjust the strut as much as possible to bring the ride height to as close to stock as possible. No guarantee, but it's the no-cost option.

Option 2 - buy all four corner stock struts from Rockauto for about $200, bringing it back to stock height.

Lastly - if I go back to stock struts, will the camber fix itself or must I make serious adjustments somewhere (I'm not an alignment guy).

My gut says go back to stock struts and junk the Mostplus stuff.

THanks

Older Civics suffer from extreme camber changes are they're lowered.
I'd assume either raising the coilovers, or replacing with stock style struts would mostly resolve the camber issues, as long as there aren't aftermarket camber plates installed as well making it even worse. You may still need an alignment after getting the ride height corrected.

Wheels, if the bolt pattern matches & the offset works, should be ok. I don't recall ever seeing 13s on a Civic. My 97 had 15s

The 14x5 wheels should be good to go.

I would toss the aftermarket struts for stock units and your camber will go back to stock, as long as they have the stock top plates as P250OUA5 mentioned.

I'd still get it aligned as your toe setting most likely will be off.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:

I don't recall ever seeing 13s on a Civic.

I had both a 1974 and a 1975 Civic, bought them new. They had itty-bitty little 12-inch wheels.

Thanks. I'd imagine the 14" OEM steelies have a similar offset to the OEM 13".

From my research the Dx had the 13" what Lx and Ex had 14". And they only got bigger with the newer cars.

You may be in for a wild wide depending on how they lowered it and how many different sets on people have wrenched on it over the years. It could vary from someone installing 100% aftermarket parts to someone getting out the cutting torch and welder to a combination of the two.

I'd start with trying to adjust what's on there and go from there. No reason to throw money he doesn't have at it unless he has to.

Civics are great cars in their stock configuration. Unfortunately a very large percentage of them get owned by stupid people who molest them horribly. I owned a 97 for about a week that I got for what I thought was a steal, and was really excited about it. Once I got into the engine, though, I found such a mess that I ended up selling it off again at a $200 loss.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:

I don't recall ever seeing 13s on a Civic.

I had both a 1974 and a 1975 Civic, bought them new. They had itty-bitty little 12-inch wheels.

Should've specified I don't recall an EG [5th generation] Civic on 13s.
I had an EK [6th gen] and I think the base model CX hatchback might have had 14s. Mine was an EX, so it had 15s [steel wheels & hubcaps].

Big turbo, full send!

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Big turbo, full send!

EG Civics are known for fat front tires & big turbos.
Cuts into the daily driver sentiment a bit

Those coil-overs have an Adjustable Height capable of lowering the vehicle 1" - 3" from stock. I'd get a couple of spanner wrenches and adjust them as close to OE ride height as practical. Nothing wrong with having it a little lower than stock though.

https://mostplusauto.com/produ...vic-ek-ej-em-2107071

First, set all four corners w/ equal fender gaps. Then you'll need to re-torque all of the bushing mounting bolts on the suspension. You'll need to get the car up in the air, and then load the suspension w/ the weight of the car (fronts & rears separately), and then torque them down. This will prolong the life of the bushings. This can be accomplished with a set of 4 jack stands and a couple of floor jacks.

Of course, whomever installed the coil-overs might not have done this step, in which case this may not be necessary, unless the bushings are already shot because they didn't. Obviously it'll gonna need an alignment afterwards, but you probably already knew that.

Good Luck and good on you for helping him out!