First of all I want to tell everyone that I paid regular retail or so ($180.00 shipped from www.lsdmotorsports.com )for these arms from a retailer, not any sort of hook-up from Skunk 2, and my post here is literally shooting straight with no alterior motives. Skunk2 isn't hooking me up to sing the praises of this product. I am just extremely pleased with the results and wanted to share with fellow EFers.
As some of you may or may not know for years EF owners have had to deal with inferior sliding ball joint or upper "knuckle" or "anchor bolt" camber kits. The inherent problem with these kits were that either the 1.5 kits were limited in how much camber they corrected, and the anchor bolt kits are PITA to ever adjust, or the 3 degree kits caused clearance issues that made the upper a arm or the sliding balljoint kit itself slam into the pinch welds in the fender well area.
Sliding balljoint kits also added suspension height to an already very tight fender well that EFs have.
Anyways I will be doing a complete install topic later, but for now I've got a few pretty pics and just overall impressions to share, enjoy:
Compact design adds minimal height to suspension and provides clearnce as to not smash the shock towers:
As you can see they completely revised the upper balljoint area, and the adjustment bolts and mount for the upper balljoint is a much sturdier design that the first-gen EG/DC/EK kits.
On the car:
My 1990 Wagovan sits pretty freaking low as pics will show, and at this height the front negative camber was definately enough to wear insides of tires, regardless of what others may try to chime in and call BS.
I turned these kits all the way out and ended up with -1.3 degrees of front camber - this is a daily driven car on softer-than-usual full coil-overs that allow a lot of travel to soak up bumps, so in turns the camber goes much more negative than a lot of others' really stiff set-ups. Ideally I like about -1.5 to -1.0 degrees of front camber on a DD car with softer suspensions. Agressive, really stiff suspensions can get away with radically negative front camber and show minimal tire wear - I intentionally set my 1992 EG Civic's front camber at -2 with it's much stiffer suspension.
Anyways here's a few pics to illustrate the low ride height, and minimal front negative camber:
Sitting:
Rolling with me and a front passenger:
Front camber at only -1.3 degrees:
Again, another angle:
I've hit some pretty big bumps/potholes and not an ounce of contact has occured up front. This may be due to my car being a wagovan with extra under fender clearance, but honestly I think the edge of my tire would hit my fender arch well before these camber kits would ever hit my shock towers, even on an EF hatch.
As long as the allen heads are properly tightened with an 8mm allen socket or longer allen wrench there should be no reason these will slip or fail in any way since the design is much beefier than the first-gen kits on the EG/DC/EK.
I truly hope the Skunk2 haters won't try and turn this into a debate, and also the "you don't ever need a camber kit" guys please feel free to skip this topic altogether.
I've been aligning lowered Hondas/Acuras for over 8 years now, and I've never been the "you need a camber kit if you lower your car at all" guy so please don't think I'm saying that. For guys with EFs lowered more than 2 inches, especially on softer spring rates/dampeners I'd be willing to bet a camber kit would help ease inside edge wear on tires.
Lastly I want to make something very clear to anyone looking to purchase and install a camber kit:
TOE KILLS TIRES WORSE THAN CAMBER, AND IF YOU ONLY INSTALL A CAMBER KIT WITHOUT HAVING A PROPER ALIGNMENT, INCLUDING TOE ADJUSTMENTS, YOU WILL KILL TIRES MUCH WORSE THAN HAVING NO CAMBER KIT AND PROPER TOE SETTINGS!!!
Adding positive camber toes the front tires out at a very high rate. Adding a few degrees of positive camber can add 3+ degrees of front toe out PER WHEEL, which will murder tires and make the car very unsafe to drive. Keep this in mind when planning on a camber kit install.
Thanks all for looking!