I heard Eibachs are pretty stiff for DD, H&R's are good. I used to have Tein springs, amongst the softest IMO.

 

for 600 bux, just get tokico illumina shocks and springs. they run less than 600 and it will leave you a lil extra money for your alignment. dont forget that your still driving a car that is probably more than 10 years old. you could break shit while your working on it or find other things broken, so be prepared o spend a lil extra dough.
when i did mine, both rear lca bolts froze in to the bushings and i had to replace them, pia.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to derail your enthusiasm for autocross and/or car modding. I went into it 7 years ago with the same attitude as you, and started buying parts to make my car what I wanted it to be, only to realize I was shooting myself in the foot when it came to being competitive.

You can have a cheap, competitive autocross car, or you can have a cool, fun, expensive, non-competitive autocross car. Think of it this way: you can turn your civic dx into a really nice, prepped track car with $10k worth of mods in it (about what my civic has)... but it's unlikely you'll be competitive in SM. Or you can buy an 88 crx Si (or any other cheap autox-friendly junker), put some decent tires and shocks on it and be competitive in H-stock.

Either way, you'll get plenty of personal enjoyment, and you'll learn a lot along the way. If I had to start over from scratch, I'd go the cheap route h:

 

Found a set on ebay for about 450 shipped strut and spring. Is that a good deal? Everyone keeps saying that the illumina's are good but how do they compare to the others i.e. koni, kyb, and tien? Please provide your "thoughts". I rode with my friend and his Skunk2's but dont like the bouncy ride. I guess I just want to know what set up will give me the best ride comfort/performance.

 

All those shocks are descent. If you want your car to be lower and handle better for a daily driver, those will be just fine.

For example, I have Tein Flex coilovers and at one time had KYB AGX's w/Tein S-tech springs. I noticed that the KYB's/S-techs were more bouncy than my coilovers, yet a bit softer. Generally coilovers are not more bouncy than struts/springs on civics, however it seems as those SKunk2's are bouncy themselves.

The price is good, IMO. If you want to piece tgether a set it might become more pricey. For example KYB AGX = ~$85 ea. x4 + Tein S-tech = ~$170

:edit: Note that Tein Flex are full coilovers, Skunk2's are just sleeves.

 

Dont really know what to say. I now look at my car like a pos. Im gonna just put it back together and drive it. i mean the motor has like 20,000 miles on it so it will last a long time.