My review of the Korback frame locks
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Joined: Apr 2003
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From: San Jose, CA
My review of the Korback frame locks
I got the Korbachs as part of a group buy (5 people, from here and honda-tech) Thanks to chimchim for organizing it. The money back guarantee plus the writeups of other people convinced me to try it. The thing that caught my attention was the improved turn-in observed by other reviewers. The car's weakest point with respect to handling is the steering response on center and just off center. The steering ratio is too slow, and the steering lacks precision. Small rapid corrections get "lost".
(note as of now Korbach only make these for 96-00 - that for other cars are still in development; AFAIK their next one out is either for the RSX or the 92-95 Civics)
Car: '97 HX coupe with 105k miles. It is a daily driver street car whose suspension has been modified because I am a handling slut. My other cars are a turbocharged 2000 miata with Tein HA coilovers and a 2003 2.3L Focus ZX5 with a soon-to-arrive SVT suspension. I take my miata on nearby mountain roads just for fun, and I autocross and track it. The Civic is reasonably well balanced such that I can come in too hot and scrub off speed sideways entering an off-ramp.
I am a bit obsessive about making a car feel the way I like. As an example I don't like how Goodyear F1-GSD3 and Toyo T1-s tires feel on my miata; they feel sloppy. I much prefer Advan Neova AD07's.
Suspension mods: H&R OE sport springs, Koni yellows, ST swaybar set, 12 lb miata 14x6 wheels, ES100 tires, swapped front upper LCA's for increased caster, front suspension upper inner rear Superpro poly bushings with offset holes for increased caster, "washer trick" in rear for reduced camber, steering rack poly bushings, Si shock tower brace. Ride height is about 1" below stock, Konis IIRC are set 1/4th turn firm front, 1/2 turn firm rear. Alignment: too lazy to get the printout, but IIRC -1* front, -0.6* rear, 0 toe front, 1/16" total toe rear.
Installation
-------------
The packaging was very good, and even though I have a 5/8" drill bit in my garage I used the one supplied because it was sharper. I will probably ship it back and get the $10 refund.
I have the stock intake, and the resonator (present in mine and some civics) in the front pax side bumper area, was a bit of a pain to get out. It was a pain to get back in so I left it out. The instructions were pretty good but for a few minor things - there were more of those plastic bolt thingies on the top of my fascia, and an extra bolt or two under the car.
I used a 0-80 torque wrench to torque the bolts to 20 ft-lbs as per the instructions, however:
(1) it stripped one of the nuts so I had to find a replacement in my junkbox (one of the turbo nuts from my miata fit), and
(2) I happily tightened the nuts on the 2 extra long bolts and I oversquashed the part in the kit that gets squeezed. I probably wasted an hour taking it out and banging and bending it back into shape and putting it back together. After that I set my torque wrench to 16 for the rest of the procedure. Maybe my torque wrench is miscalibrated high when set as low as 20, or maybe the presence of the cutting oil that I used on the drill bits allowed the thing that gets squeezed slide in there and get deformed (hard to describe unless you see it). Also, the washers provided for that part of the install got squashed and deformed because they were a bit too small and soft - I had to look in my junkbox for a bigger washer.
Driving impressions
-----------------------
First thing I noticed was that the steering felt heavier at about 5*-45* off center. Next thing I noticed was that the steering is "livelier", 5-45* off center. The returning force is stronger, sort of similar to the effect of increasing caster. Good stuff.
The car is more responsive to rapid 10* left-right-left-rights when going straight at high speed. The last thing I noticed was that the front end of the car feels a bit more solid when going over one-sided bumps, such as going over railroad tracks diagonally. There is also significantly more bump steer (kickback through the steering wheel when hitting one-sided bumps). Adding caster to a car (which I did before) is supposed to add bumpsteer, and I think the Korbach locks added to the bumpsteer because instead of the chassis flexing to absorb the impact, some of the force gets transmitted through the steering.
Another feeling I get is that the front shocks can be turned up a bit more; the front springs feel like they could use more damping. It's possible the Korbach locks allow the front springs to work more now....
The car's balance has not shifted toward more or less understeer. If I turn up the fronts it will understeer more on transients, I'll have to try it to see.
Today as I drove I kept thinking to myself, maybe this is a placebo. But, I can't convince myself of that.
When I installed the Si shock tower bar I didn't feel any improvement - but at the timeI wasn't trying to feel one; I just figured, it's free, Honda put it there, it must work. When I installed the shock tower bar in the miata, it had no effect on handling, but it noticeably reduced the cowl shake. NVH improved. Ditto with the rollbar; it improved the aftershock vibration over sharp bumps, but not the handling. In the Civic, the Korbachs improved steering feel first, and not so much the NVH; it just makes the car feel a bit more solid, but not less harsh.
Pretty amazing for such small pieces of metal. The way it works I think is not that the bumper is turned into a structural piece. It already is, as designed by Honda. However the corner attachment points flex; the Korbach pieces are add small triangular reinformcement, like how you could put small diagonal reinforcement pieces to the legs of a table where they enter the tabletop.
To me it's worth it. Of all the mods I've done to the car, the biggest improvement was from the Konis and the rear swaybar. The H&R OE Sport springs was more than very noticeable, but was not a huge improvement over Si springs (ride quality suffered of course, though it's not bad at all). I would put the Korbachs at about or just behind the combo of swapping the front upper LCA's and putting in the caster-increasing offset-hole Superpro poly bushings. It *is* a noticeable improvement. No it doesn't turn the steering feel into that of a Boxster or an RX-8 or a miata. It's still a slow-ass steering rack especially on-center, but it does reduce one of the car's weak points. That's what makes it worth it. For you it depends on you of course. Did you change your springs just to get the slammed look, or did you also change the shocks and want the car to take a set in the corners faster? Did you change the exhaust to make it loud or did you look up the dyno gains?
Why didn't Honda do it? I think the chassis met their rigidity and NVH goals, but they made the mistake of not realizing that the car's steering would feel better with more reinforcement at the bumper joints. Either that or they actually had a "sneeze test" goal - actually making the on-center steering fairly dead so that your car stays in its lane on the freeway when you sneeze. Try that in a miata or EVO and the car will change lanes....
That's it. If you think Korbach paid me to post this... I wish. It took me about 3.5 hours to install it, and on a weeknight no less. The quality of the instructions and packing made me think that their 2 hour install estimate could be relied on. I was tired and was late for work the next day because of the install problem I ran into.
Cheers.
(note as of now Korbach only make these for 96-00 - that for other cars are still in development; AFAIK their next one out is either for the RSX or the 92-95 Civics)
Car: '97 HX coupe with 105k miles. It is a daily driver street car whose suspension has been modified because I am a handling slut. My other cars are a turbocharged 2000 miata with Tein HA coilovers and a 2003 2.3L Focus ZX5 with a soon-to-arrive SVT suspension. I take my miata on nearby mountain roads just for fun, and I autocross and track it. The Civic is reasonably well balanced such that I can come in too hot and scrub off speed sideways entering an off-ramp.
I am a bit obsessive about making a car feel the way I like. As an example I don't like how Goodyear F1-GSD3 and Toyo T1-s tires feel on my miata; they feel sloppy. I much prefer Advan Neova AD07's.Suspension mods: H&R OE sport springs, Koni yellows, ST swaybar set, 12 lb miata 14x6 wheels, ES100 tires, swapped front upper LCA's for increased caster, front suspension upper inner rear Superpro poly bushings with offset holes for increased caster, "washer trick" in rear for reduced camber, steering rack poly bushings, Si shock tower brace. Ride height is about 1" below stock, Konis IIRC are set 1/4th turn firm front, 1/2 turn firm rear. Alignment: too lazy to get the printout, but IIRC -1* front, -0.6* rear, 0 toe front, 1/16" total toe rear.
Installation
-------------
The packaging was very good, and even though I have a 5/8" drill bit in my garage I used the one supplied because it was sharper. I will probably ship it back and get the $10 refund.
I have the stock intake, and the resonator (present in mine and some civics) in the front pax side bumper area, was a bit of a pain to get out. It was a pain to get back in so I left it out. The instructions were pretty good but for a few minor things - there were more of those plastic bolt thingies on the top of my fascia, and an extra bolt or two under the car.
I used a 0-80 torque wrench to torque the bolts to 20 ft-lbs as per the instructions, however:
(1) it stripped one of the nuts so I had to find a replacement in my junkbox (one of the turbo nuts from my miata fit), and
(2) I happily tightened the nuts on the 2 extra long bolts and I oversquashed the part in the kit that gets squeezed. I probably wasted an hour taking it out and banging and bending it back into shape and putting it back together. After that I set my torque wrench to 16 for the rest of the procedure. Maybe my torque wrench is miscalibrated high when set as low as 20, or maybe the presence of the cutting oil that I used on the drill bits allowed the thing that gets squeezed slide in there and get deformed (hard to describe unless you see it). Also, the washers provided for that part of the install got squashed and deformed because they were a bit too small and soft - I had to look in my junkbox for a bigger washer.
Driving impressions
-----------------------
First thing I noticed was that the steering felt heavier at about 5*-45* off center. Next thing I noticed was that the steering is "livelier", 5-45* off center. The returning force is stronger, sort of similar to the effect of increasing caster. Good stuff.
The car is more responsive to rapid 10* left-right-left-rights when going straight at high speed. The last thing I noticed was that the front end of the car feels a bit more solid when going over one-sided bumps, such as going over railroad tracks diagonally. There is also significantly more bump steer (kickback through the steering wheel when hitting one-sided bumps). Adding caster to a car (which I did before) is supposed to add bumpsteer, and I think the Korbach locks added to the bumpsteer because instead of the chassis flexing to absorb the impact, some of the force gets transmitted through the steering.
Another feeling I get is that the front shocks can be turned up a bit more; the front springs feel like they could use more damping. It's possible the Korbach locks allow the front springs to work more now....
The car's balance has not shifted toward more or less understeer. If I turn up the fronts it will understeer more on transients, I'll have to try it to see.
Today as I drove I kept thinking to myself, maybe this is a placebo. But, I can't convince myself of that.
When I installed the Si shock tower bar I didn't feel any improvement - but at the timeI wasn't trying to feel one; I just figured, it's free, Honda put it there, it must work. When I installed the shock tower bar in the miata, it had no effect on handling, but it noticeably reduced the cowl shake. NVH improved. Ditto with the rollbar; it improved the aftershock vibration over sharp bumps, but not the handling. In the Civic, the Korbachs improved steering feel first, and not so much the NVH; it just makes the car feel a bit more solid, but not less harsh.
Pretty amazing for such small pieces of metal. The way it works I think is not that the bumper is turned into a structural piece. It already is, as designed by Honda. However the corner attachment points flex; the Korbach pieces are add small triangular reinformcement, like how you could put small diagonal reinforcement pieces to the legs of a table where they enter the tabletop.
To me it's worth it. Of all the mods I've done to the car, the biggest improvement was from the Konis and the rear swaybar. The H&R OE Sport springs was more than very noticeable, but was not a huge improvement over Si springs (ride quality suffered of course, though it's not bad at all). I would put the Korbachs at about or just behind the combo of swapping the front upper LCA's and putting in the caster-increasing offset-hole Superpro poly bushings. It *is* a noticeable improvement. No it doesn't turn the steering feel into that of a Boxster or an RX-8 or a miata. It's still a slow-ass steering rack especially on-center, but it does reduce one of the car's weak points. That's what makes it worth it. For you it depends on you of course. Did you change your springs just to get the slammed look, or did you also change the shocks and want the car to take a set in the corners faster? Did you change the exhaust to make it loud or did you look up the dyno gains?
Why didn't Honda do it? I think the chassis met their rigidity and NVH goals, but they made the mistake of not realizing that the car's steering would feel better with more reinforcement at the bumper joints. Either that or they actually had a "sneeze test" goal - actually making the on-center steering fairly dead so that your car stays in its lane on the freeway when you sneeze. Try that in a miata or EVO and the car will change lanes....
That's it. If you think Korbach paid me to post this... I wish. It took me about 3.5 hours to install it, and on a weeknight no less. The quality of the instructions and packing made me think that their 2 hour install estimate could be relied on. I was tired and was late for work the next day because of the install problem I ran into.
Cheers.
WRX cuz Honda won't wagon
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 1,725
Likes: 0
From: San Jose, CA
Thanks for the review! I'm glad you posted it up.
I almost stripped a bolt head torqueing mine down, but managed to avoid it. I never deformed that U shaped insert, but it's interesting to hear how you did. When I was installing, I was wondering why Korbach chose to design that piece that way. I would seem that they might be prone to slipping out eventually, but who knows.
Good review.
I almost stripped a bolt head torqueing mine down, but managed to avoid it. I never deformed that U shaped insert, but it's interesting to hear how you did. When I was installing, I was wondering why Korbach chose to design that piece that way. I would seem that they might be prone to slipping out eventually, but who knows.
Good review.
