I purchased half of the Honed Development kit back in late 2019 or 2020, but wasn't planning on installing until I had achieved a 1.09 at Wakefield. Then once achieving that, I wanted to push for the 1.08 first. Since then it's been sat in the cupboard, but now with Wakefield closed for the foreseeable future I thought maybe it's time.

I've also purchased the rest of the kit since, as new parts have been released. They have some great write ups with technical explanations/diagrams on their website https://honeddevelopments.com, but the overall idea is to correct the negative affect of lowering these cars, and enhance it's capabilities further. With this installed, we won't be doing bandaid type patching mods to fix issues, and will allow the car's setup to be fine tuned. The following parts are:

Suspension Geometry Tuning:

• Front roll center correction extended ball joints
• Rear roll centre correction kit

Steering Upgrades:

• Adjustable tie rod kit
• Aluminimum steering rack bushes
• Lock reducing rack spacer

Adjustable Control Arms:

• Rear camber arms
• Toe arm kit with eccentric adjustment kit + camber shims

Suspension Reinforcement:

• Trailing arm gusset plate

Brake Control:

• Brake booster delete kit
• Master cylinder brace pieces (they don't make for my chassis, but have provided the main parts for me to make one)

Misc:

• New OEM Honda rear trailing arm bushing, I purchased myself to replace whilst I'm here

The photos below is the finished product for all the suspension components. Some have had Honed mods installed to them, others are complete Honed parts replacing previous aftermarket pieces. Everything was cleaned and painted where necessary. If you'd like to see the process of the modified parts, I'll have all the details below.

Front roll center correction extended ball joints

The SiR knuckles were already installed on the car with new wheel bearings and the extended studs for Winton which was covered in a previous post. Now doing the Honed kit meant I could install the extended ball joints with supporting collars. Once I removed the old ball joints, I rubbed them back with some scotch brite, painted black, then installed the ball joints.

Rear trailing arms

The trailing arms have the most amount of work to be done. They'll be receiving:

• Rear roll centre correction kit
• Trailing arm gusset plate
• New OEM Honda rear trailing arm bushing

I'll be replacing the old poly urathane bushing with a new OEM Honda bush, speaking with Honed they suggest we only need to run this. Rumour has it, it's actually the Mugen bush as they decided to combine manufacturing of it.

Anyways, I started off by removing the brake caliper and rotors, and pressing out the big bushing, which came out surprisingly easy.

Next up was to drill the holes for mounting the rear roll centre correction kit bracket, which mounts onto the trailing arm and bolts onto the lower control arm.

The instructions say to line up the side of the bracket to the caliper mounting bracket as pictured below, then you drill a hole into the trailing arm where the top bracket hole is.

Now it's time to clean out the dirt and few spots of surface rust to prepare for welding on the gussets, using wire wheels and scotch brite. I was concerned the heat from welding will leave bare metal inside the back section of the trailing arm, which will be somewhat enclosed from the gusset plate. I thought it would be a good idea to cover it in rust converter beforehand, which was a stupid idea as it instantly burned... twat.

The welding process took a while, but I wasn't rushing. The instructions suggest 30mm stitch welds with 20mm gaps. Some photos you'll see black marks where I've measured this out as a rough guide. I started at the front end of the trailing arm and worked my way back. Didn't require too much hammer massaging apart from one big gap which I'll include a photo of below with a ruler to point out the gap, I tried to tap the gusset down a bit to where it was level with the edge of the trailing arm, then welded in the gap. Wasn't too bad.

You'll see a lot of brown half way through the weld, or around the weld. This was from stopping and starting again. I think this is from too much gas? Comes off easily wire a wipe over. I'll include a bunch of photos below throughout the process!

Typical running out of wire mid job.

Annnd all the welding is done! This took a bit of time but it was enjoyable. Some good looking welds, one or two not looking too pretty. I gave the welded areas a quick wire brush, then taped up the hubs and gave them a fresh coat of paint.

Press the new OEM bushing in!

The old polly urathane bushes still seemed quite solid to be fair, just covered in surface rust inside and out. Be interesting to see how the OEM bush goes.

Here they are all done! Looking super fresh with the new gusset plate welded on, the Honed bracket bolted in and the new OEM Honda bushing. I then realised whilst taking these photos I forgot to install the extended studs -.-

Luckily Honda decided to design the rear hubs with this cut out section to allow easy stud installs, even with the long extended studs. Phew!

Ta da! Lovely.

Rear lower control arms issue

The rear lower control arms posed bit of a fight. I realised the 6 left over Hardrace bushings from the kit I installed at the start of the motor swap actually fitted these, at the time I didn't do them for some unknown reason, I think at the time I thought the kit was only for the fork styled rears, and these are eyelets.

I went about pressing out the first bushing and it wasn't too bad, but then doing the next one as per below actually bent the arm. I had it setup correctly to my knowledge, a slightly bigger one on the bottom supporting the control arm surface just around the bushing, then with a socket on top which matches the bushing to push through. As you can see by the next photos it went it inwards which was really annoying. Readjusted and eventually got it out having sprayed even more WD-40 on it but it was too late.

Confused, I then spotted the bushings on either control arm were actually different sizes. When measuring the new bushings I only compared against one arm and assumed the other was the same.. Rookie move. You can see one arm has 35mm bushes, the other has 31mm bushes, and the bushes I have are 31mm..

These control arms I got from the car which had the suspension and everything in many years ago, so theres a chance these are mismatched. The EF9, DC2R & Wagon's all run them so maybe theres a variance across the models.

Luckily I have a spare EF9 which still has them, so I'm going to borrow them for the race car. I have another set of them from a wagon I wrecked in the shed somewhere, those can go on the EF9 shell one day. For now I fitted the 2 from the Civic, one is just missing the 2 bushes. As it just sits here, I say it'll be fine just letting the pick up points where the bushings would normal be just sitting on the bolt against arm instead.

Lovely, matching control arms. The bushings look ok so I'm not even going to bother replacing them. Quick scrub down and a coat of paint and they are looking shmick.

Adjustable tie rod kit

The Honed adjustable tie rod's are a really nice bit of kit. Depending on the car, you can move the spacers around on the bolt section to suit your vehicle. Side by side comparison to my OEM ED tie rod which was cut down 10mm to suit the SiR knuckles.

The rod ends come in a sealed bag from a manufacturer, and on opening there appeared to be some surface rust on the top side of them. It was only minor, and they had been sat in my cupboard since 2019. Having being sat there for so longer I wasn't that bothered, just went ahead and installed. Making a note of it here for future reference.

Cleaning & painting the OEM / existing aftermarket bits

The Innovative traction bar has been installed since the motorswap. The paint it comes with is super thing and chips instantly, which has resulted in a lot of surface rust over the years. I gave it all a good wire wheeling, then painted it up real good, and gave the castor rods a good clean too.

Paint

Honed have yet to release their front camber arms for the ED/EF chassis, the Skunk2 ones are a lot better than the Hardrace ones as they don't hit the strut tower, so I have no issues continuing to run them. Just gave them a little wipe down, dirty vs clean below.

Front control arms

Front strut forks received a scotch brite scrub down and some fresh paint.

Front swaybar will remain standard for now, again just gave it a little clean, especially as it was covered in dried up CV grease. The rubber bushes on the mounting points could be replaced I suppose, maybe something to order for the future.