Medgin

hey guys, so i'm posting this up her for my fiance. she has a 1999 Honda Accord 4 door. When stopping regular, not hard braking or riding the brakes forever there is a very strange rattle. to me it sounded like a loose suspension part. the noise is coming from the front drivers side of the car. when braking hard i cannot produce the sound. but if i slowly come to a stop i can, everytime. i swung the door open, accelerated to 20mph and then slowed down. i cannot hear the noise outside the car. i had her accelerate to 20 mph and then come to a stop while i ran alone side and couldn't hear the noise outside either. but if i'm in the car and accelerate to 20 mph and come to a stop just sitting in the car i can hear it. i also can reproduce the sound when putting it in reverse and beginning to back up. the sound sounds like it's coming from right in front of me, almost in the steering column. i pulled the front drivers side tire and tried to move things around all over and felt nothing loose anywhere. i'm thinking it's under the hood, and leaning towards like a motor mount bushing. not really sure. i'm not really a honda guy and haven't worked on these very much, i mostly work on subarus. any help you guys can offer would be great.

Thanks!
-Caleb

gasha1

...had the same problem with my 99 coupe. It was my passenger side motor mount that made the sound and also caused my exhaust to rattle. Obviously my exhaust needed some attention also. Good luck.

Medgin

hmm ok, yeah thats the only thing i could figure. a motor mount. well i'll get out a bar and pry on all of them and see if any seem unusually loose. thanks for your reply!

dleccord

sounds like a flange bolt behind the hub.

trust me.

Medgin

hmm ok i'll pull the tire off and take a closer look.

99AccordVTECv6

Hey guys, got the same prob here. Just got back in from the garage after pulling my left-front wheel and yanking on every suspension component imaginable. Wouldn't budge a bit. So I dropped it back down and took it around the block, and after listening to the noise and thinking about it for a minute, I think I've narrowed it down to 3 possible causes. Medgin, to be sure you and I are having the same problem, does it happen mostly when you start moving from a dead stop, when the tranny shifts from 1st to 2nd, and sometimes during low-speed braking and/or cornering? If that's the case, then yes I believe we are.

Here's what I'm thinking. I noticed this sound about 6-8 weeks ago, which is when I decided to replace my upper control arm & ball joint, which did need replacing (I did the right side last winter per the recommendation of a mechanic, which cleared up a similar sound). After that, it seemed to come and go, which makes me lean toward a suspension problem vs. motor mount. Yesterday it was pretty bad, as well as today, which is why I decided to check it out. I've been noticing that the noise seems worse the colder it gets outside, so hopefully it's just b/c of temp and not something coming loose, but I still want to know what's causing it. So I thought about it, and it seems like the noise occurs when torque is drastically changed. My initial thought was that it was the lower ball joint wobbling around needing replaced. Then I flipped through the ol' Haynes manual and came across the section on replacing the radius rod. When you look at what this thing does, it's easy to see why this part, or at least it's bushings or connectors, could be the culprit. The radius rod is what absorbs the force generated by the wheel and applies that force to the frame to push the car forward (or pull backward on the frame during braking/reverse). My lower control arm to radius rod bolts were fine, but I started getting cold and didn't feel like spending more time popping off the plastic splash shield to get at the other end. There's also a good possibility that it's a motor mount. Haven't ruled that out yet. Maybe I'll go out in the garage and rev the engine up to like 5-6k and back down a bunch of times redneck style and listen for it while it's in park. If it makes the noise, it must be a motor mount. Think I'll try that next. I'll post back w/ results.