I purchased my '03 a few months ago, and I finally got around to putting a matching set of tires on it. Person before me had Pirelli P-Zero Nero's on the front and P7000's on the back...dumbass.

Anyway, to my surprise when I took off the left rear wheel, I found two rubber spring spacers still stuck in the spring. I presume left over from when the vehicle was shipped. But only on the one side, there weren't any on the right side spring...you'd think whoever took em out of the right side, might have checked the left but what do I know.

I noticed this instantly when I took the wheel off, so how does this get by the orginal tech that prepped the car, two tire changes, and a rear brake job. That's at least 4 times before me that wheel has been off the car and someone had those spacers staring at them.

 

The previous owner may have put them in there to help 'improve' handling.

 

No way....these were left over from shipping the car and should've been pulled during the initial prep.

 

Those should have been removed when the car was delivered new to the dealership it was assigned to. Having worked in Honda sales and observing the techs prepare incoming cars, I know of those spacers. I saw them being removed from S2000s. I could be wrong but I recall seeing a notice somewhere on the car to not drive it above 5mph with them in place. Only purpose of them is for the car when it's in transit.

 

This sort of thing happens more than you'd think. I've pulled them outta 3 different cars that I've worked on over the years. Most recently was a 30k mile, 3rd owner car!!!

We've had a number of people spin out at slow speeds and curb the car.....only to find spring spacers in the suspension. Needless to say, Honda had some explaining to do.

There is a reminder/inspection tag around the shift knob for the springs spacers to be removed during PDI (post delivery inspection), but too many dealer techs can't seem to read and just remove it.

The rubber tends to rot as it ages, since it is not meant for a longterm install. I would think that the others simply deteriorated and fell out over time. The car is probably very happy you removed these little irritants.

-Hockey

 

I bought and 02 last month with 53K miles on it. The spring spaces were on all four corners. Amazing it could go so long and no one know to remove them!