Upgrades before Aspire gear...?

[taxcider]

I recently had a look under my front end (on the way to work something went "smack!" and I saw a bolt and some bracket bouncing behind my car so I figured I'd have a look for missing bits).

Everything appeared to be in order, not that I am super savvy, but there were no signs of recent chaos or trauma or anything missing that I could detect (I think the bolt may have been on the road and I just flipped it up).

I did notice that all of my bushings that I could see with her jacked up and just by having a peek with the wheels turned this way and that, were pretty well old and t3h fuXor3d. Very squishy to the finger and highly cracked.

My question is, without doing the aspire suspension/brake upgrades, would it be useful and worthwhile to upgrade just my wheels/tires, plus all the bushings? Plus a strut tower brace, too, perhaps?

I do want to do the aspire upgrade at some point, just not yet. I'm just looking for a few opinions, I'm trying to SLOWLY ease into the greasy bloody knuckles thing.

[Safety Guy]

Check your ball joints!

That is the main worry I have about Festiva front ends. "As a ball joint goes, so goes the car."

If you need to replace the ball joints you will be replacing the entire control arm assemblies. At this point you will find out how easily your control arm-to-body-bolts come out. They may come out easily, or they may ignore you and just turn endlessly without moving much.

This gives you the opportunity to solve that problem before you ever try going to the Aspire stuff.

While you're at it, you may wish to see if you can loosen your tie rod ends from the tie rod itself while they're still attached to the knuckles. If you can do so easily, then lube the area up so it will stay easily removable when you get to the Aspire swap (preferably within six months or so?).

I wouldn't worry too much about the rubber bushings unless they are really really shot. You can best replace them with new ones, or stiffer ones, when you do the full swap.

The ball joints/control arms are what's really important.

Karl

[Guest]

yeah, Karl has a extermely valid point. Control arm\sway bar bushings being bad causes very sloppy handling and undue stress on the balljoint. Which can lead to balljoint failure. (Balljoint Failure at highway speeds = RIP):shock:

New bushings and control arms will make a very noticeable difference if you have been riding on old wore out ones for awhile. Wheel\tire upgrades help allot too. Combine them, and you'll be happy enough until you do the Aspire swap or invest in some other form of suspension.

My Black car doesn't have the Aspire suspension, but with the Konig 13's, Falken tires, FMS lowering springs, strut mounts, KYB GR-2 Struts, new control arms, bushings and strut tower bar it handles damn good at 85 and even better at slower speeds.. The lower center of gravity makes the car not feel so top heavy in my opinion. So in high speed cornering, you don't feel like it will tip over like you will with even a new stock setup.