Mr.Chow

So it's been awhile since I've owned a civic, but I picked up a 96 LX last night and had a questions on something that's been driving me nuts.

So with the wheel straight (the wheel shakes a little over 70 mph and gets worse going 80 and above) I hear like a humming vibrating noise that when turning left at higher speeds (55 and above) seems to have a pulsing effect. When turning right the noise goes away completely, in fact if you just ever so slightly move the wheel to the right the noise will go away as well.

When I jacked up the car the driver's side wheel had very slight play in it and the lug nuts were pretty damn hot, on the passenger side the lugs were a little hotter still, but no real play in the wheel.

I'm thinking this is symptoms of a wheel bearing going bad, am I right? What else could it be? Other than that the car drives nice and straight.

On a side note, does the LX come standard with ABS?

jimsiggy

CV joint will cause noise too, and some vibration felt on the floor. Hot lugs could be from the brakes; regular braking or dragging too. my 2cents

Mr.Chow

good point on the brakes. thanks.

Mr.Chow

TTT...wheel bearing?

ej2Tigre

I would say CV joint. From my personal experience, wheel bearings make a metal-on-metal dragging/scraping sound (or clunking) constantly not intermittently. When you spin the wheel, while in the air, do you hear anything similar to that? and are you lowered by any chance?

D3vin

I would double check re-torquing your wheels. Your brakes could be warped and your wheels might need re-balancing. (Hence the shaking after 70).

Mr.Chow

brakes are not warped and the wheels are balanced and torqued correctly. I'm going to do the wheel bearing tonight and hopefully that will take care of it.