Alignment

I drove the del Sol to Honda yesterday and it kept up pretty well with traffic, yet it was still a little rough handling. The alignment went well. All 4 wheels are now within original specs. Only the front left and the rear right are still off by a little. The tech at honda said the ball joints (upper control arms) didn't need replacing because the alignment tool wouldn't allow the alignment if the ball joints were bad. That will save me about $360 and some sweat, yeah!

Driving it home today was great, like butter! After remembering I was driving an EV I got the EV grin for the first time with this car. It still has a bit of a choppy startup and the charger needs programming but its starting to feel almost finished.

Quick struts

Since the del Sol had been lowered I knew the day would come to replace the springs. The big question was did anything else need replacing. Lowering kits usually just include the springs and can include struts too. The Tokico struts were pretty much toast so I ordered a pair of Quickstruts ($132.99 each), a stock spring and strut assembly, for the rear. It was pretty easy to remove the lower arm and drop the old struts but the outer bushing basically fell out. After calling around the cost of the lower arms ($97) from Honda was only a little more than both bushings and renting a tool to press them in place.



The new springs, struts and lower arm.

After taking the front wheels off it looks like the bushings on the lower control arms are good. Phew! That would have been much more work and $ replacing those.