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OK, wings, seats, suspension, etc. have all been covered....what about wheels? Like CTR wheels, or something close to stock, but bigger? I think I remember reading that even with 17" rims, you can feel a drop in performance, so would that be rice? What about lambo doors? It looks cool as hell, but people are making kits for it, so it'll be mainstream soon enough. Now everybody drools over them because they're (currently) semi-rare to see, but when you start seeing them everywhere, will you consider that rice? I'm just ranting now from severe sleep deprivation (as usual), but I think I've halfway covered my point.

 
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1. I don't doubt that there are cars as low as a GT car driving on the street.

2. Show car and race car are two different things.

3.Modified Suspension mounts: Depending of which class you race in determins the degree of modification you can do to a car. The JGTC (I know you are familaiar with) allows for Unrestricted Suspension Design, meaning that although the car may look like a production car (Skyline/NSX/Supra), the chassis/suspension configuration may infact be completly different. conntrary to The SCCA's Show room stock class which allows for little more the a welded in Roll cage.


the Idea is, a given suspenion design is built to work within a certin ride height (That ride height vairies between chassis/suspension designs). If you deveate from that designated ride height, you may be adversly effection how that suspension works together (To high or to low). This deals specifically with suspension geometry. Suspension geometry determins the roll center of a given car. the roll center is the point that when a car turns the body rotates around(Roll center is different then the center of gravity on a car). The way that a cars roll center and center of gravity interact determins how much weight gets transferd durring a turn (Weight transfer or rather controling weight transfer is a fundamental part of performance handling) as you alter the ride height of you car, you adjust where that roll center is, hopefully making it closer to the actual center of gravity (The closer the roll center and Center of gravity are the less weight gets transfered in a turn). However, if you alter the ride height to much you may actually move the roll center away from the center of gravity, increacing the amout of weight that will be transfered in a turn worsining handling. There are other issues dealing with specific suspension designs, where when a cars body rolls the roll center its self moves as well. this movement can also adversly affect handling in much the same way as altering the ride height can (by moving the Roll center away form the Center of gravity).

enough of the lesson though, I dont want to wright a book.

 
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Oh, I know show cars and race cars are different things... that's why I said that when you said it wasn't practical for most street cars.

Good lesson. I'll be sure to pay attention to the height of my car when I re-do my suspension as I'll be able to make it lower.

 
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I dont agree with people who say that if u make a modification for just looks is rice, i have an 01 civic, its slow as hell, i would need to put a lot of money into the engine to make it even close to competing with cars that even have like 200 hp. also, i think a major reason y peopel think civics are fast, is beacuse they never driven a real fast car, i had a 90 IROCZ before it got totaled, and that was a fast car. i got a civic because it has a lot of potential to look good, and i'm working on that right now. anyway, sometimes when i hit the gas hard on my civic, it feels like its going fast, when its really nothing compared to my old car, so my point is for people who never had a real fast car b4, they acctually do think that the civic is fast. the civic is awesome, great gas milege, looks hot witht he 17s and will look hotter with a body kit which i'm getting soon. anotehr thing i wanted to say is that people who say that u shouldnt do any mods unless it makes ur car faster, y did u get a civic? an 01 civic dont run less then 10 grand, so y not get like a 96-98 Z28 or Trans AM if u are all such racers. bottom line is that civics arnt meant to go fast, they are economy cars and i really really like them for some reason. so b4 saying anythign like "doing any mods just for the looks is rice" please consider what i said in this pretty long opinion.

 
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Actually, the wing on the Integra Type R helps a lot in keeping the back end complaint during hard cornering/braking at high speeds.

 
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i need my stock wing. it is ugly w/o it.

 
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werd, Diff folks diff strokes. Its their car so they can do as they please. IF you dont like it then keep it to yourself no one will say your mute..

 
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to each is own. respect the fact that somebody put work into making the car unique and wanted to make what they had into somthing that they liked. do whatever the hell you want and dont talk ish to somebody that has different taste than you. rice on a car is kinda like a guy with a mullet.

 
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There's a difference between mods that for just looks, and mods that are for making your car look fast.

Frankly, neons or LED washers don't bug me. I count Altezza's as rice, simply because they perform worse than stock, fogging up and giving off a pink light (except TYC). Some Altezza's look pretty decent, dare I say. PIAA's are rice, because they burn out and are dimmer than stock.

What is truely rice are those things that make your car look fast, but don't. This includes wings, gauge pods, body kits, scoops, fenders with holes in them, widebody kits (when your wheels are still the same width), loud mufflers. These mods are trying to say "look at me, I'm a performance car!" What's embarrassing is that its still a slow civic.

 
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yep... and 95% of people think its ugly.

 
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actually ... i think the opinion really vries from place to place ...... ive noticed that the people who say taht nothing is really wrong with rice comes from cali and otehr highly urbanized areas while the people who dislike rice come from more rural areas ....... it prolly is ALSO a matter of locale i guess ....

 
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Yeah, I hate having to brace myself against the passenger's seat when I'm making a hard left turn. For right turns I have my door panel.

I had racing seats in my 6th gen, and man, the lateral support was awesome. Too bad they were so uncomfortable.

 
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If some one has an older muscle car and the trick it out then nobody ever complains, they look at it and say "damn, that looks sweet." I go to Hot August Nights in Reno every year and I see some really custom cars and they all look sweet as hell. But if someone with a sport compact customizes their car then they are just a ricer and get nothing but crap for it. I don't think it is really fair. I mean wether you are into muscle cars or sport compacts we all have the same love of cars, but it never seems that we can get along.

Can't we all just get along???

Just my $.02

 
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...right... because people who trick out muscle cars dont put giant body kits, 4 foot wings, ugly lights, and a slew of gross stickers on their cars.

 
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What IS rice:

Altezza, fake hood scoops, stupid loud mufflers, fake HID lights, CHROME RIMS, basically decorating your car like a chrismas tree ie. a blue light here, a green one here... rice, huge ****ing wings, multiple stickers....

 
Rep Power: 342

I think rice is more in the driver than in the car.

Take this for example

Guy 1 puts a CAI on his civic and thinks he might have gained 5 hp and runs slightly faster than a stock civic. While Guy 2 puts on a CAI and thinks he getting 30+ hp and runs mid 12's. Both have the same car, both have the same part. Which do you think is a ricer?

or how bout this

Guy 1 puts a body kit and wing on his car because he likes the way it makes his car looks, but can admit it did nothing for performance. While Guy 2 puts on the same wing, but has this big explanation on how he is so much more aerodynamic and has more downforce so hes bound to beat you. Again which do you think is a ricer?

Around were I live there are many cars with body kits and wings but the majority of them know that their car is still slow, so I wouldn't consider them ricers. But thens theres the minorty that put a body kit on and honestly think they can hang with a Mustang GT or Camaro SS

 
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for people who think that body kits are just supposed to make ur car "look" fast, i have no idea what ur talking about. personally, i think a good desgined front bumper and a good designed rear bumper just looks a lot better then a plain stock bumper, i dunno y people automatically assume that if a car has ground effects and rims thats it is trying to look like its fast when most of the time it isnt. i dont even have one of those annoying *** bumble bee exhausts cuz i dont want my car to sound liek its fast, cuz thast all the exhuast does, make ur car sound fast. when talking about looks, thats a different story, a hot body kit makes ur car look hot wheather u have 10 grand under the hood or just stock under the hood. the onyl reason y i would consider dropping a car would be just to get rid of the wheel gap, not performace cuz a civic has none. like i said b4 if u were going for a performance car y not get a used Trans Am for the money. i think my car looks good with the rims, a lot better then most, but i dont get y people always wanna race me just cuz i have rims, must be cuz they think that i think that my car is fast and they wanna prove me wrong and because of that they are idiots. i have rims, good system, body kit real soon and maybe a little drop, maybe. thats it, if some idiot wants to think that i have a fast car cuz its "hooked up" or its rice, big deal, his an idiot. so please dont say that if people hook up their cars for the looks, its rice, esspecially if u urself have a civic with an intake, drop and exhuast and nothing like a turbo whcih would actually make ur car faster. i think that with civics its all about looks unless u have a lot of money to make the car into a real drag race car. a civic would however make an excelent long distance car in whcih a track has many tight turns where billy bob's trans am would spin out on the 1rst turn. but 90% of the time the only way we acctually get to race our cars is on the street which just goes straight and the civic isnt designed to do that unless u modify the hell out of the engine. just my 426 cents

 
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i gotta agree with hustlelikemofo, except about the intake and exhaust. they do make the car look better. intakes brighten up the engine bay and get rid of that ugly factory air box. and exhausts look a hell of a lot better than a rusty 1 inch pipe sticking out the back even if it is just an obtrusive fart box sounding muffler. plus i think homer simpson said it best "when i gun the motor i want people to think the world is coming to an end!" i have headers exhaust and an intake on my car and i dont drive it like im faster than everybody, i drive it like my car looks better than everyone elses.

 
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Bumper sticker on a Mustang I saw once put it best:
"I can hear yours, but can you FEEL mine?"

If you want REAL power that'll scare the crap outta someone, nothing's gonna beat an American V8.

edit: HTML vs. UBB *sigh*

 
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you said it best. i had a Mustang GT up until March. I had a MAC cat-back exhaust and it sounded awesome. It didn't have the throaty Flowmaster sound, but it was beastly like a wild animal. I loved the sound of it when the exhaust sound reflected off the side of a big truck next to me.
now i have a stock honda exhaust and i can't even hear it lol. time for the skunk2 cat-back baby.

 
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i wanna take a remark back i said b4 about the exhaust, i wanted to get a muffler cuz the chrome ones they make look hot, i didnt because i heard even with a silencer it doesnt shut it up completly, but it does look good. i still stay with the that the muffler and intake dont add any performence thats even noticible.

 
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I would have to partially disagree with the last part of your post, there.

With the Injen CAI and DC TCS in my 02 EX, I laid-down just under 116 at the wheels. Stock is around 108 HP. Granted I don't have a dyno sheet of any pre-modded runs, I do have the sheet from the aforementioned runs. 108 to 116 HP is a 13% gain in HP at the wheels. You going to tell me that it's not going to be noticeable? Perhaps not in everyday driving. But with everything in my car that I show with (and that's a lot of weight) I still managed a 17.29 quarter-mile at the track. Reaction time plays no part here since it was not competitive drags, just test and tune. . . and I know my shifting isn't pristine. . . but I seriously doubt I would have gotten any less than 17.80 without those mods.

Blah blah blah. . . . yeah, it's not a lot of gain, but it is noticable. Since then I installed the DC stainless header, and I've noticed the engine revving-up faster in first and second. I have yet to hit the dyno since this latest mod, but I do know it's helping. Granted, these mods do MORE to enhance the sound than they do to enhance the performance, but in many cases the performance gains can be realized and noticable given the proper combination of bolt-ons.

*sigh* Alas, none of this really matter since I'm still slow as a minivan. . . . which is why I'm showing rather than racing. After the swap, I'll touch on this again.

 
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to Yukonart, the numbers u mentioned to me are funny because what u said is like having a 300 mhz pentium processor and spending like 100 bucks on getting a 305 mhz pentium processor, what i mean by this is that the gain is so low and pointless its not even worth doing. if u want to put an intake in there to make the engine look cleaner, paint a couple wires ect, thats coo, i would do that too. but what i dont get is when people get like 10 hp add out of a couple mods and then say it helped. what did it help? r u a racer in which any mods help shave milli seconds off the 1/4 mile run? i raced my civic with my friends a lot of times for fun, i lost to all of them including a 95 dodge neon, after i floured my car off the mark, he just beat me by about 10 feet, but it was still a loss. so do u think if i had an intake i could of had him? and either way i would be embarssed to tell any1 that i beat an ugly *** neon. my friend has an 97 integra completly stock with intake and the 4 inch tip chrome muffler, he raced my friend who has a 4 door pontiac grand prix, the dude in the integra got smoked. wat i'm trying to say by this is that doing little mods that add liek 10 hp is nothing because our civics cant even compete with a big *** family car V6, looks 20X better then it but cant compete. unless u do a motor swap, add a turbo, this and that that will hopefully make ur car over like 200 hp, then thing like an intake do help when ur in a faster class of cars. i could go on all day about this but i hope u get my point. civics are in their own little class compared to the Trans Ams and Supras. its almost like getting a 75 on math Test 1 and an 85 on Test 2, the 5 counts a little more then the 5 in Test 1 even though its the midian number, i guess thats the way i see it.

 
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once again the narow view of accleration as the only means to identify a fast car pops up.


SO..... Are you teling me that a Caterham 7 is a slow car because it only has 105 Hp? How about a Lotus Elise 111S? Its only got 156Hp. Personally I'd take either any day over a Trans Am or Supra.

What of handling? so what if a car can out accelerate you, when you can make it up in the corners. the corners are a whole hell of a lot more fun the a straight line any way!

 
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****, I won't argue with the fact that modding the D17s in our cars is nearly pointless for practical performance gains, but the gains are present.

However, Zzyzx touched the main reason for modifying the rest of the chassis. My car will certainly NOT out-accelerate a lot of cars, but I'll most certainly own them once a turn comes up.

With the slightly-better acceleration in the lower gears from the mods, and the extensive modifications to the chassis, autocross is where it's at. If I wanted to drag, I would have already either swapped the engine or traded-in in the whole damn car. On the other hand, the thing handles like many sports cars, now. . . so that LITTLE bit of extra umph from the engine should be just enough to help on the track.

Oh, and yes. . . I DO show my car.

 
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I don't really consider anything ricey unless the car's a complete piece of crap and there's an ugly wing and a muffler tip and such.

I see stuff like that all the time. a ford taurus with an aluminum wing and a fart cannon muffler and all kinds of that. But when it's a nice clean car with some neons in it with a nice sounding muffler, I really don't consider that rice. You don't know what's under the hood and it's a clean car so, so what?


Some people just don't want a fast car, some people want a medium of looks and speed and hell sometimes just looks. To each his own.

 
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first somebody sed and i dont remember who about rice being a racial term. and i agree with that, and if i ever met the guy who coined the term "rice" i wud seriously beat his *** down to the ground. yea, itz true that a lot of asian people buy import cars, and a lot of them have interests in modding it and stuff. but think about it. how many of u guys are asian? i doubt even HALF of the RICERS as sum ppl put it arent asian, but ppl still call it a name that makes it seem that itz onyl asians that drive around with RICEY cars. where i live, there a lot of wut a lot of u on the site wud call riced up cars, and a lot of times, not cuz they want it like that, but sum ppl just dont have the money to afford expensive *** parts for their car.

why cant people seriously just let ppl do wutever they want to their car, if u dont like well itz not ur car. so wut u guys dont like "ricey" cars, but there are ppl out there that dont like ur car, even if itz not "rice." trust me, i get this **** that u guys give to "ricers" from rich *** ppl from this area. for anybody who knows saratoga, california, i go to school in my civic and no matter where i go in the parking lot, im parking next to m3's, m5's 3 series, roush mustangs, cobras, trans am ws6's, and every single possible model of benz, lexus, bmw, i get **** from all these rich *** ppl who dont kno jack about anything that has to do with cars, just cuz they have rich *** parents who will buy them wutever the hell they want. and im the guy that drives the "rice," black 2001 civic sedan with almost no mods, just cleared lites, dropped a lil, intake and exhaust.

i think that most ppl out there who hate "rice" are just ppl who are trying to blame other people for criticism the whole import scene receives. in the bay area, u can hardly drive down the street without seeing a couple "riced" out cars, driving along making their **** can noise. but who cares, itz not ur car, just forget it. ppl do with their cars wut they want to do. dont go around dissing ppl cuz u think theyre car is ugly, cuz theres gonna be hella ppl out there who think that UR car is just one of those damn fart noise making ricerockets. its all a matter of wut u think looks good. some ppl like altezzas, or big wings. yea, if they buy it cuz they think itz help their performance, theyre just being stupid. but so what. theres no saying what looks the best, ppl buy what they want. if u have a girlfriend, u mite think shes most perfect woman in the world, but other ppl will look at and theyll think she looks like ***. u cant tell ppl what looks good, and u cant tell them wut to buy. just let ppl do what they want, and if u disagree, who cares? itz not ur car. everyone can modify their car to be whatever they want it to be.

just my 0.02

 
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Man, ppl that write sentences in all lowercase and who write in run-on sentences gets so hard to follow when they seem to write in a stream of consciousness.

People with mods that can be seen as ricey often say "let people do what they want."

I can't stand this, cus' 99% of you go around and totally trash a neon with wings, or a Ford Taurus with a muffler.

If you trash other cars for being ugly, you have absolutely no right to take some moral highground by saying "don't judge others." Because I see all your posts and you guys talk so much smack.

dKj said in an earlier post.
dkj just said:
Aren't you dissing a car in 2 fast 2 furious? Maybe that was somebody's car?

Speaking of kids with nice cars, don't you have a 2002 BMW 325i? That's a pretty nice car

http://www.7thgencivic.com/forums/sh...threadid=47994

 
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what i was just saying is that civics are not performace cars. cars like a lotus might not have a lot of hp but they are fast because the car is tiny and 156 hp is plenty. might as well start comparing motorcycles to civics which have like 75 hp...

 
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no, i drive a civic. that was my brother posting