Clunky and Loud

While the KSports’ offer a great price to ride ratio they tend to be a bit loud in the cabin. I could drive over a pebble and the thump inside the cabin was more like hitting a 3 inch deep pot hole. Granted the suspension is stiff making the springs hard to flex and the frame was taking most of the impact which would explain the harsh noises. However; those running Tein Flex which is also very stiff have no complaints of obtrusive cabin noise. The Flex also comes with Tein’s "silencing rubber" between the tightest coils which they claim reduces that cabin noise. None the less, Tein Flex is nearly twice as expensive as the Kontrol Pro’s.

Aggressively Stiff

The Kontrol Pro’s are incredibly stiff which is great for track driving or hitting the back roads, but for the daily commute a softer ride is always a welcome luxury. You can get custom spring rates straight from the factory, however; that seems counter intuitive. By the time you pay for your custom springs on your KSports you had might as well picked up some Buddy Club N+ or Tein CS. If you’re looking to run stiff on the track and back roads then the KSports are the coil overs for you.

Lock Rings Seized Up

Ah, the real reason why I ditched the KSports. Not that long ago I had to pick up a set of new tires. Being new, these tires had a lot more tread which lead to having to raise the car back up a bit to prevent rubbing. When I went to pop the lock ring in the back it wouldn’t come loose. I hit it with a screw driver, a mallet, the "keys," I heated them with a torch, I cooled them with ice. I shot them with PB Blaster, silicon spray and WD–40, nothing worked.

I can’t entirely blame this on the coil over. Living in Oregon the DOT sprays the roads with de-icer during the winter which can have very negative side effects on almost all of your cars moving parts, including lock rings. With a little more preventative maintenance this could have possibly been avoided. However; one side of me feels that the part should have been made with enough quality to not require any kind of maintenance. I have to remember that all aftermarket parts for vehicles are intended for "off-road purposes only" meaning that they are intended for track conditions and fair weather.

Conclusion

I ended up pulling the KSports off and putting my OEM struts with Tein H–Tech springs back on. Granted I am about an inch higher off the ground now I could not be more satisfied. The ride is much softer, no more clunks and thumps and the car drives more like a it did from the factory. The Tein’s offer a nice compromise between performance and comfort, the next step would just be adding some Koni Yellows for additional adjustments.

The Valentine V1 Radar Detector provides the coverage you need to out fox the foxes and stay one step ahead of your local speed trap. I have been using the V1 now for over a year and I am still ticket free (knock on wood). The range of this detector is superior to just about anything else on the market, even those fancier GPS based detectors. I can start tracking speed traps over a mile out before I can see the police and they can see me.

One of the most valuable assets the VI has is the arrows. Yes, I was skeptical as to how accurate these arrows really would be and have come to live by them now. I’d say about 10% of the time they are inaccurate which is more than acceptable for me. It gives you time to start checking your mirrors, looking down the road ahead, or looking across to street to find out where the threat is coming from. This is a huge asset when you’re trying to identify the direction of radar and decide when and what type of maneuvers to make.

There are a few quirks to the Valentine, one is that it can be over sensitive in parking lots with sliding doors etc… Paying attention to what band the V1 is catching can help you identify whether or not you’re getting a false alarm, but still it can get annoying. Occasionally it’ll throw a laser warning at you when a vehicle with radar guided crash avoidance is approaching you which can throw you for a loop until you identify the offending vehicle.

I didn’t buy the V1 to be perfect and I didn’t buy it to be under-sensitive, I bought it help me find speed traps and avoid them and it does that like a true veteran. It may be one of the most expensive radar detectors on the market, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. I’ve tried lesser brands in the past like Cobra and never had luck with any of them. In fact, my cobra alerted me to a radar gun after the officer turned his lights on and pursued me. Needless to say the officer openly wrote me a more expensive ticket because of my radar detector and had a good laugh at it.

With the V1 however; I know about that radar gun long before I’m even within it’s range. This clairvoyance gives you more than enough time to safely slow down before you can even be tagged.

I would rate the Valentine V1 Radar Detector 10/10 for long range radar avoidance. This is a must have for anyone not looking to get a speeding ticket.

For more information on the Valentine V1 visit the Valentine homepage at: www.valentine1.com

• Box intakes
• Cold Air Intakes (CAI)
• Short Ram Intakes (SRI)

All three have their key advantages and disadvantages, CAI is good for high end gain but tends to lack in the low end and can lead to hydro lock, SRI’s are good for low end response but lack in the high end and are prone to heat soak, and box style intakes sit right in the middle of the road, good low end response, better than SRI high end gain, and not as prone to hydro lock. There are plenty of each style intake on the market for Japanese autos, so in this write up I am going to focus mainly on two brands and styles, the CT (formerlly Comptech) Ice Box and the Injen SP1431 SRI/CAI intake. Both are based on results found on a 2006 Acura TSX and personal experience. I’ll also be using the “butt-dyno” as a feel for tangible response and all other dyno charts and/or graphs will be from the manufacturer.

We’ll start with the Injen SP1431.

Injen SP1431 Intake (TSX Application)

What makes the Injen special is the fact that is a hybrid of sorts offering you either CAI or SRI applications. As shown in the picture there are two tubes and they connect together with a rubber-esc coupling. This can really make your day if you live in a wet climate and want to run a CAI in the dry season but would prefer to run SRI in the wet season to prevent hydro lock.

Injen claims that their MR technology gives you maximum performance gains all while staying within the factory safe air/fuel ratio and they back up that claim with a dyno chart showing a baseline of 162.79 horsepower compared to 169.91 horsepower equipped with the SP1431 with MR technology. The vehicle used for the test a 2005 Acura TSX six speed manual. You can view the chart by clicking here. Injen claims a full 7.12 horsepower gain over your standard OEM intake which is pretty good for an intake alone.

I ran the Injen SP1431 in SRI mode on my TSX for about 6 months and I didn’t feel a whole lot of improvement horsepower wise, I did notice some improvement with throttle response. Granted this may have been because by nature an SRI allows the air to travel less distance into the throttle body and thus the engine gets air faster, but I like to think the intake was doing it’s job. The Injen does offer that fairly loud and distinct throaty sound when you really step on it, but at cruising speed or under light driving conditions the intake is as quiet as OEM.

Install was fairly quick and painless and if you plan on leaving the intake as an SRI you don’t need to mess with removing the front bumper to get to the air resonator, simply remove the OEM intake box and tube. You will need to move some coolant lines around however and for this get some needle nose vice grips wrapped with duct tape to pinch off those coolant lines so they don’t spill. All in all to install the Injen SP1431 as an SRI should take less than an hour and most mechanics could complete the job in a half hour or less.

The CT ice box intake is exactly as it sounds, a box style intake which will re-use the bottom of your OEM intake box.

CT Engineering Ice Box Air Intake TSX Application

A key advantage of the CT Ice box is it’s design, in place of your OEM air resonator CT places a cone molded to have a bit of a velocity stack built in, the nice thing is that once this cone or horn as CT refers to it has passed through into the fender it makes a 90 degree turn facing the headlights. This keeps it out of most wet conditions and greatly reduces the chances of hydro lock while offering some of the benefits of sucking air outside of the engine bay. The lid on the ice box looks alot like your OEM intake lid with a few differences, one the ice box lid is taller allowing for more air volume and two the are no ridges on the inside top of the lid to make air transfer less turbulent.

With this design the ice box is able to deliver good low end response and decent high end gain, call it a compromise of sorts, you don’t get all of the benefits of an SRI or CAI but you get a good middle of the road of both SRI’s and CAI’s and a whole lot more than OEM. The ice box doesn’t offer that deep throaty sound though, there is additional sound but not a whole lot over stock, just enough for you to faintly hear it in the cabin and for the pedestrian to hear it as whine up off of the stop light.

Maintenance is a breeze since the ice box is a bigger and better OEM style intake. K&N OEM replacement filters fit the ice box easily and can be found at many local auto parts stores. To change, clean, or replace the filter simply unscrew the lid just like OEM and replace it as you typically would. Install can be a bit more tricky than an SRI, you’ll have to remove the front bumper to access the OEM air resonator and to mount the horn. The rest reuses existing parts like the OEM intake bottom and tube to the throttle body.

After driving both I prefer to ease of use with the CT Ice Box but I still lament for that throaty whale of the Injen. Which intake is better for performance? I can’t tell you that, each application is different and it depends on what you’re after. With either intake you wont regret your decision.

For more information on the Injen SP1431 click here.

For more information on the CT Ice Box click here.

Speaking of Tein, I have ridden on basics and SS, the basics were in a 2006 TSX and the SS where on a 2007 TSX and 2004 TL, the latter having EDFC. For the basics I was not to impressed, first they seem to have a chronic issues with developing a squeaking issue in the rear on TSX set-ups and second, they have no dampening force adjustment. Granted, Basics are an entry level coil over and at around $750.00 +/- $100.00 they are a fairly good budget choice.

The SS on the other hand I have to admit are much nicer than my K-Sports. Softer and smoother rebound, very nice spring rates and dampening force adjustment via EDFC or the old manual method. This should be expect of a coil over system costing over $1000.00 on average. The ability to use EDFC even though listed as incompatible with TSX SS applications is a definite convienience.

The K-Sports offer a wonderful middle of the line coil over, I’d say falling somewhere between Tein Basics and Tein SS. Another advantage to the K-Sports is you can adjust the shock body for ride height as opposed to adjusting the spring perch seen with most Tein set ups (to see how this works read the K-Sport manual by clicking here). This allows you to keep the full amount of suspension travel and lower your ride height to a near bagged appearance.

Over the course of my two weeks of ownership I have dropped another half inch for a total of about 3 inches of drop (7.62 centimeters) and still have about another inch and a half (3.81 centimeters) to go before the K-sports are tapped out. With this now lower stance I have noticed a bit of fender rub over bouncy corners at a higher rate of speed, to remedy this I have adjust the dampening force to be firmer to compensate for the added body roll of a hard turn into a bump.

Adjusting ride height with the K-Sports is fairly simple and straight forward. Raise the vehicle up and place it on stands, remove the wheels (you can get away with leaving the font wheels on), take a flat head screw driver (K-Sport suggests a brass punch), and a hammer then tap the base collar counter clock wise to loosen it. Adjust the collar up to the amount of drop you would like to add, now grab the collars and spring in your hand and turn clockwise until your base collar is pressed against the shock body. Take your hammer and screwdriver and tap the base collar clockwise to lock it and check to make sure the spring perch collars did now loosen. That’s it. It took me about 45 minutes to adjust all four corners.

Overall; these coil overs are impressive for their price and should be considered by anyone looking for a decent set of coil overs on a budget, because lets face it, we can’t all afford a $1600.00+ set of coil overs but would sure like to have some of the high end coil over adjustments.

First impression out of the box was that the K-Sports seemed to be built of fairly decent quality regardless of some drivers calling them “K-Mart” coil overs. I would say the quality of these coil overs rivals that of Tein Basics, Tanabe S-OC Type II, and DropZones. I have yet to hear a negative review of K-Sports for the TSX. Also, these coil overs sport the ability to seriously drop your car. Right now I have mine adjusted to leave just a half finger width fender gap and I still have well over 3 inches of thread left to go.

The other nice thing is the base of the shock or the mounts will actually thread up to that 3″ of gap leaving the full amount of suspension travel possible. Most coil over kits only adjust the spring perch and eliminate a lot of suspension travel in the process. This extra travel lends to a smoother rebound rate giving the feel of less “bounce”.

With 36 levels of dampening force adjustment, the K-Sports leave a lot of available options that price competitors like Tein Basics just don’t have. Granted, basics are a great coil over set up, but for the price point, lacking the adjustable dampening force puts K-Sport out ahead. I have yet to try the full range of adjustment, I have just kept them at one full turn off of soft in the front and two full turns off of soft in the rear. I have noticed a significant reduction of brake dive and torque steer alike. The car really hugs the corners well and the rear end is not apt to step out on you.

It’s hard to say how these coil overs will hold up over an Oregon winter with di-icer and salt on the roads, but from the looks of them now they should hold up as well as any set of Teins, Tanabes, or Buddy Clubs out there.

So far I’d rank the K-Sport Kontrol Pro’s for the TSX a 8 – 10. Why not the full 10? With the lack of any kind of electronic dampening force adjustments like Tein EDFC, it’s just a pain to make an adjustment, also these coil overs may be a little stiff for some, even on the softest settings.

They appear to be a bit more “yellow” than the nokya competition. It could be more of a deeper yellow, as far as any improvement in visibility over the nokya bulb would be pure speculation. However; at $39.00 per set they are some of the most expensive replacement bulbs I’ve come across. Visibility wise the yellow doesn’t offer any extra lighting over a standard halogen because that is basically what it is with a yellow paint over the bulb.

With a HID replacement you should get substantially better visibility with a 3K HID bulb, even better visibility than a 4300K HID fog upgrade could provide. This is just based on lower kelvins = more lumens and lumens = visible light. The higher the lumens the more visiblity you will have.

Back on topic, the Hoen Endurance fogs will not offer the same light output as HID’s but to have a more JDM look you can’t beat the quality and even at $39.00 a set it’s still significantly cheaper than the leading HID replacement kits.

Hoen’s website – Endurance Product Page

Hoen Endurance Yellow Foglights - Hoenusa.com

Upon first inspection of the exhaust the welds are meticulous, the polished look on the mufflers is amazing, no finger prints from shipping, no digs, no dents. At install the Comptech exhaust fit like a glove. No modifications or “strategic hammer bops” to fit, the hangers were spot on with OEM, and the tips even hang perfectly level in the back without poly hangers. Fired it up, no leaks, no hissing, and a nice quiet tone.

By no means is the cat back by itself loud, in fact it’s not much louder than stock. Under load you can hear it a bit in the back and outside but that’s about it. Unfortunately; that’s about all an exhaust for the TSX is good for. Comptech only promises a gain of 3 horsepower with the addition of the exhaust and most other manufacturers offer the same gain. All in all you are looking for improved sound and little bling on your rear end.

After about 6 months of owning the exhaust I added on the Random Technology (RT) cat to the mix and the exhaust got substantially louder. The tone retains that deep quality but a little bit of rasp is added. To some including myself, this raspy sound is nice, sounds like a nice free flowing exhaust. The RT cat did definitely add some power that the butt dyno could pick up on, but that’s for a different post.

After about 3 months with the RT cat I added the Comptech header as well. Now the exhaust is fairly loud, but there is no drone on the highway and very little in cabin resonance accept under load. A little more rasp was added to the sound but the resonator and mufflers on the Comptech exhaust handle the noise well and suppress it to nice deep grumble as opposed to your typical Honda civic “fart can.”

I would rate the Comptech Cat-Back 10 – 10 for excellent fit and finish and wonderful sound.

*Note: Comptech is now known as CT Engineering

CT Engineering (formerly Comptech) – CT Engineering TSX Catback Exhaust

Comptech Cat-Back – Acura TSX – OEM Header/Cat

First the facts on the springs:

TEIN High.Tech springs utilize the latest spring and material technology to optimize comfort, performance, and quality. Designed and tested in North America to be used in conjunction with OEM or similar shocks for excellent ride comfort and slightly increased handling. The line is produced with Vanadium (SAE9254V), which is durable, lightweight, and has properties to retain more spring stroke. High.Tech springs are designed for those seeking a slightly lowered stance while maintaining high ride quality at a reasonable price. Most vehicles will attain a 1.2 inch drop for a more attractive appearance, added performance, and excellent comfort. Includes a one year limited warranty.

• Chrome Vanadium SAE9254V Construction
• Progressive Spring Rate Design
• Includes Silencer Rubber on certain applications
• Gold Powder Coat Finish
• Developed to be used in conjunction with OEM or OEM replacement dampers
• 1-year Manufacturers Defect and Sag Warranty
Covers over 5mm sag, breakage, deformity, and noise.
Does not cover powder coat finish and rusting.

Spring Rate (F/R, kgf/mm): 5.7/3.4, Lowering F/R: -1.1/-0.7 Inches.
*sourced from Tein’s Web Page

The springs do provide the specified drop, 1.1″ in the front and .7″ in the back, or approximately those numbers. In laymans terms your stock CL9 (TSX) has an average of about 3 – 3.75 finger widths of wheel gap, the H-Techs will reduce that gap to 1.75 – 2 finger widths of gap. With the A-Spec lip kit, or Euro-R lip kit this drop may visually appear to be a bit lower. I do get comments from other CL9 owners with H-Tech’s that mine looks lower with the A-Spec kit, which is somewhat true but mainly due to an optical illusion.

I have the H-Tech’s mounted on my OEM dampers and the springs provide a very soft ride comparable to OEM ride quality. Not much bounce if any, they will stiffen up around the corners being a progressive type spring. My 2 year old and my wife never noticed much of a difference with the H-Techs over OEM springs for comfort. However; they are not intended and do not provide the handling results of a more advanced spring/damper combo. There are times if I lay into a corner to hard I can feel the spring get to a point where it no longer compresses and it feels like a bit of snap over steer may occur which can lead to a lack of confidence in the twisties.

Now that about 3 months have passed I can feel my OEM dampers getting a bit strained with the drop. Tein does not endorse the use of any aftermarket spring with OEM dampers, however; a 1″ drop is usually the maximum you can get away with on OEM dampers. I am beginning to notice some knocking in the front and I am not sure if it’s the damper going bad or something else, but the amount of bouncing has increased which is leading me to believe the dampers are on the way out. You’ll have to acknowledge I put the springs on dampers that were already 32,000 miles in to their lifetime which is not suggested.

I would reccomend that if you are in the market to be lower and are looking for the same drop as the H-Tech’s provide then you should also consider a set of aftermarket dampers like Koni Yellow’s to go with the springs. This way you can get adjustable dampening and longer life out of your set up. The koni’s also provide an additional 20mm of drop (~.8 inches) with their adjustable spring perches. You will get a better handling car and still be able to retain close to OEM comfort.

Also consider the Tein CS coilovers. OEM comfort, up to 2.1″ drop, and EDFC compatible, that would be the ultimate set up for seeking a comfortable ride, moderate drop, and an overall good suspension set up.

Overall I’d rate the H-Techs a 8 – 10 which is by no means bad, and would probably be a 10 – 10 if I had ordered aftermarket dampers at the same time.

Drop with H-Techs on my car:

CL9 (accord, TSX, Euro R) on Tein H-Techs

CL9 (Accord, TSX, Euro R) on Tein H-Techs