EFing8

Hi, i've been a member here a long time but have been over at hondacivicwagon.com because, well, i have a 90 civic wagon. I have exhausted their knowledge base and need help from you guys.

(i live in canada so all unit of measurement will be in KMH)

THE PROBLEM:
2 years of highway vibration and i'm at my wits end. at 80 it starts to vibrate the steering wheel, at 90 it is constant, at 100 it's very bad. The car does not shake, the steering wheel vibrates.

ATTEMPTED FIXES:
- changed steering rack 2 weeks ago, old rack was really worn out. this was the only thing that seemed to help even a little. the new rack seems to have a good rack bushing because i can't find any play up there and there are no noises.
- front suspension rebuild 20,000km ago, all joints & bushings up front are still tight (told by 2 different shops)
- alignment last monday, said driver tie rod had a tiny bit of play but were still able to align.
- changed front 2 tires today, no difference.
- tried my winter wheels & tires, no difference.
- swapped out both knuckle assemblies with different used ones. no difference
- new front pads/calipers/rotors

POSSIBLE CAUSES?
- axles?? no torn boots & no clicking.
- a bent LCA?? (highly unlikely i think)

i've had my civic wagon for 6 years and i DO NOT want to part with it. with 445,000kms on the clock i am sentimentally attached to it and do not want to push it off a cliff, but i have a 2100km road trip in 3 weeks and i can't handle 21 hours of steering wheel vibration.

any and all thoughts are welcome, throw even your wildest idea's out there.

The link to the discussion on the wagonboard can be found here: http://www.hondacivicwagon.com/bb/vi...php?f=8&t=6046
it's a bit messy because of the ongoing problem, that's why i started a new thread here.

90 civic wagon, 5 speed. aka THE SON OF A B*TCH BASTARD CAR THAT WON'T STOP SHAKING!

civic accord honda

try replacing the axles

EFing8

that's fine and dandy, but can that actually cause my problem? I am 100% sick of changing things that 'might' fix things.

CW-ITR

iTrader: (11)

I'm having the same problem on my crx. I'll be changing out the axles some time next week. If you have not result yours by then, I'll jump back in to give my update.

EFing8

Thanks CW-ITR. Don't forget to come back and let us know.

DVS_SI

Do you have aftermarket wheels? using hub rings with them?

Bent strut or shock? Out of round tires (flat spots from hard braking)?

Could be your rear brakes or tires also

Motor mounts?

EFing8

Wheels are early model 13" Civic 1500S alloys.
i also tried my winter steel wheels with studded tires (in the middle of summer) and nothing changed. just a helluva lot of noise from the studs.



i just changed the rear drums & shoes last week, so i know it's not that.

as far as out of round tires, i got 2 new ones today, no change, tried winter tires, no change.

bent strut or shock... perhaps... it would probably leak fluid if it was bent though right? no leaking fluid or visible bends. shocks have about 30,000km on them.

i checked all the motor mounts and tried to tighten them all up, they were tight. inspected the bushings and they all look good. i did a test of putting the car in first gear and driving it along taping the gas pedal. i don't hear any knocking or clunking anywhere.

90_EX_Civic

i have the same problem you are having. i have yet to look and check, and is the only other thing i can think off. have you checked the bushings in your radius rods? a shop could miss this cause the bushing is in the front lower support. it's also hidden by the bumper cover and the plastic shroud (if you still have one). id say check them out.

EFing8

it is my understanding that a toasted radius rod bushing will fail my 'tap the gas in first gear a few times' test, as it will make a clunking noise. i've tightened mine down and don't get any noises.

i'm really leaning towards axles. perhaps an inner cv has gone bad on me. i'm eagerly awaiting CW-ITR's axle replacement and see if it solves his problem.

keep the idea's coming guys, this is good stuff.

sanimalp

how confident are you that your ball joints are ok? what about tie rod ends for the steering system? are your wheels balanced, or do any of them have huge wheel weights or curb rash on them?

as i see it, the most likely culprits, in order are:

unbalanced wheels
unbalanced/bad driveshafts
steering rack end bushing
ball joints
steering rack tie rods, outer first, then inner
rubber suspension bushings on LCA or UCA, front radius rods, etc.
front radius rods/crossmember bent
rear crossmember / rear subframe

the deal is you can test most of these problems by applying hand pressure to see how much play is in the parts. if there is any play, then the part probably needs to be replaced. For example, when a ball joint goes bad, it will just flop around and is really easy to move. a brand new ball joint is pretty hard to move around. similar with outer tie rod ends.

more likely is the car suffered an accident in its past in which the suspension geometry was pushed out, and was never repaired properly. one way to tell is to measure as accurately as possible the center of the front wheel to the center of the back on both sides. If there is more than 1% difference side to side, there may be a big problem that only a frame puller would be able to fix, if even that. you can measure lots of suspension geometry by hand to figure out what side of a car was hit in an accident just by comparing the differences in measurements from one side to another. While i wouldn't go crazy on that theory, it is something to think about with a 18+ year old car.

EFing8

*** it's not the wheels. *** i've rotated tires, balanced, got new tires, tried my winter rims & tires. no difference.
myself and 2 different shops find no loose suspension parts.

rear subframe on my car is no big deal, i have a spare and it bolts on a wagon, not welded on.

it does have 445,000kms on it so maybe things are turning to spaghetti. i'll measure from center to center on the wheels. good one.

EFing8

well i was kind of hoping my wheel to wheel measurement would be out just so i knew what was up. not the case. 256.5cm on both sides. out no more than 1mm.

sanimalp

ahem.. bad dampers also fit that list I made above.. If they are blown, you could take them out and see the piston just kinda do what it wants with no real resistance. It is awfully hard to tell with the springs on though, so you should take the whole assembly out, take the spring off, and check how easily the piston goes in and out. If your tires show abnormal sidewall wear, that also could be evidence of bad dampers, because the tire becomes a basketball and the compression wears the sidewalls as you drive.

That's, of course, unless that was included in the "front suspension rebuild", which would have been nice to know before i typed all this out.

It could even be a bad engine mount causing the vibration. have you inspected them?

not to beat a dead horse, but cheapo tires are notorious for being more out of round than wheel weights can compensate for or that the tire jockey is willing to deal with. I didn't see you mention what brand of tire you are running, but its a factor and it is worth bringing up. For comparison, my wife's EF has Dunlop sp40 13in tires and her car steering vibrates a little with new struts, ball joints, and tie rod ends. The tires, properly inflated, suck but they were $53 a piece. I swapped on my bridgestone potenza re960 AS pole position tires, which were $80 a peice, from my EF and the ride was significantly smoother, all other variables considered.

My final opinion is that sometimes you have to wait for **** to break to figure it out, unless you have unlimited time and sanity and/or money to chase these issues down. I am not saying to give up, i am just saying that this page contains probably 95% of the **** that will cause the issue you describe. Occams razor says the simplest solution is probably correct, and most of the solutions are on this page. My question then is: do you trust 100% the commentary from the shops you took your car to? did they do 100% of the work they said. Because if even 1 shop didn't perform due dilligence on your car,didn't torque one ball joint bolt, or 1 damper fork bolt, then all your arguments that **** was checked go out the window. Things like having before and after printouts of your alignment, old parts given to you after the work was done that match the parts that went in, and on and on. you probably hear about people that never take their car to a shop. I am one of them. why? i don't trust the people doing the work to do the work properly. not even Honda. I learned the trade from one of the best airline mechanics in the business, and I can see how big the difference is between the way I do things, and the way some random *** shop does things.

My point is: if you want this problem solved, you have to tackle it yourself. No one cares as much about this problem, for the money, than you do. Get under the car with torque specs for every bolt in the suspension, and untighten and tighten them properly. inspect every rubber grommet, boot, and bushing for abnormal wear, age/stress cracking, leaking grease, excess play, and unexpected damage. If you don't see the cause, be persistent. check the list of things suggested on this page yourself. don't take people's word for it. if you do those things, I bet money you will find the problem.

EFing8

update:

took it back to the same shop as yesterday and pretty much had a mechanic handed to me and started telling him what to do.

'put the car on the hoist and spin the wheels up to 100kmh'
'uuh ok'

so they do it and both are clearly wobbly.

'take the wheels off and spin it up again.'
'uuh ok.'

no vibration at all. everything is smooth as butter.

'ok so balance those tires again!'
'uuh ok."

one now spins perfectly round. the right hand one still wobbles. they said their balancer said it was balanced and that was the absolute best they could do. the wagon is pretty good now, but still by no means is it as it should be. my next step is going to be finding a shop with a 'road force balancing machine'. they are expensive and most tire shops in small towns do not have them. the owner of the shop told me the nearest road force balancer was about an hour away.

this means that my winter rims/tires are also out of balance. so this means that in my diagnostics i got screwed over by *3* different sets of rims/tires being out of balance. i was %100 certain it wasn't the tires until they spun it up to 100kmh without the wheels on and it was smooth. I'll get a road force balance and see what happens.

EFing8

bump

glagola1

A bad axle will definitely make vibrations. I would try that.

EFing8

i was looking over the axles again today...

no torn boots, no clicking. HOWEVER, i did notice that mine do not have those rubber dampening rings onthe middle of the axle shaft like some have. perhaps...

Fo-Do Fanatic

replace the axels. i remember when i had my SAAB i went through hell and back to get that thing not to vibrate over 70mph. turned out my passenger axle was bent. not even that bad, but bad enough for me to not even TOUCH 70.