EuroR_TSX

Hi Guys! first post in a long time.I'm having issue with my girlfriends 1998 four-wheel-drive Honda CRV after doing a number of upgrades to the suspension and steering. It has all new tie rods, lower ball joints, trailing arm bushings, swaybar bushings, as well as front and rear adjustable camber kits. The struts were replaced with Tokico performance shocks, and they have a 1 inch spacer at the top for the lift. Additionally, I replaced the steering rack because the original one was leaking. I flushed and replaced the old lines before running the rack, and only used Honda power steering fluid.

The issue I'm having is that after getting the car aligned the car pulls to the right. When not on acceleration, or when you're cruising, it seems to hold somewhat of a straight line, but once you accelerate it'll definitely pull much stronger to the right. I should also mention that the tires are brand new too, but I haven't tested rotating the tires to see if the pulling goes in the opposite direction. I've heard that if the pull changes direction that it could be an issue with a tire itself.

Overall the way the car drives feels funny, and I was expecting the camber kits to really straighten everything out so the car will drive normal. Does anyone think that a 1 inch lift would drastically affect how the steering rack would perform? In a weird way the steering feels funny/sloppy/misguided, and the car feels top heavy on turns. I also put on wheels with a wider offset of +20 since the originals are +55. I was expecting it to counter act the top heaviness with a wider track. Anyway, any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

holmesnmanny

i bet it's the rack, on bad racks after revving it ive had pulls to the right, always to the right, ive found there is a valve inside that goes bad and allows pressure to bleed to one side causing the pull

what brand are you now using ?

it's possible for caster issues to cause pulls too

and post your alignment page here

EuroR_TSX

I ended up going with an A-1 Cardon Reman rack. Would have rather gone with an OE reman from Honda but they're now discontinued. =(

What components would cause caster issues?

Unfortunately they didn't provide a print out, they're a specialty shop that usually works on track cars (Evasive Motorsports). I'll reach out to them to see if they can provide.

Any other thoughts?

ThisIsMatt

Wow, you made a lot of changes all at once and pretty much all of them affect ride and handling characteristics. For your steering pull concern, you state that it happens when you're on the gas. This points more towards torque steer more than anything, and the reason you may feel it now and not before the lift could be due to the fact that your CV axles are at new angles after the lift which could possibly be more sensitive to torque steer. Since the trans is on the passenger's side of the car, that side will have the shorter axle meaning if torque steer is going to happen, it'll pull to the right. I suppose it could be a rack issue, but why only when you're accelerating?

Were all the bushings you replaced rubber, or did you go urethane? I replaced my trailing arm bushings with urethane bushings in a civic I had previously and man did it firm up the ride! I figured replacing JUST trailing arm bushings wouldn't make much of a difference, but it did and in a daily driver, it sucked.

Did you replace just the struts or did you replace the struts AND springs, like a coil-over setup? Strut damping is pretty closely linked to spring rates and if the two aren't paired well you can get some pretty ungainly ride characteristics.

Wheels with a wider offset will also change your steering and ride characteristics because now the tire contact patches are further outboard of the vehicle. This can change steering feel pretty considerably, and with the lift now your tie rods move away from the rack at a new angle too. If you went with wider and/or taller tires, now coupled with wheels that are probably heavier than stock, you're adding a reasonable amount of weight to each wheel. This is unsprung weight, AND rotational weight which brings with it a change in moment of inertia (if you're unfamiliar, look up moment of inertia for a nice dry read...i recommend around bed time).

The vehicle will naturally feel tippy with the lift. I've seen on here that 1" spacers tend to actually result in a more-than 1" lift, so your change in ride height is 1" at minimum. That's quite a hike in your center of gravity. If you compare a "sport" version of an OEM vehicle with the non-sport version (Civic SI vs Civic LX, for instance), Honda only tends to include a ~0.5" drop with the sport suspension package. Sure aftermarket parts can easily drop a car 4x that, but Honda is trying to lower COG with a minimal number of side effects like degraded ride characteristics, unusual handling feel, and shortened component life.

Sorry, this got way more long-winded than I expected. The TL;DR version is with great change comes ...well...great changes. You could try swapping back on the original tires to see if things change at all since that's about all you can easily do to compare before/after, but what you're experiencing to be different now may be a cumulative summation of all the changes you made.

EuroR_TSX

OK Guys, I was able to pull the alignment sheet from the shop. It looks like theres some info not listed on here, anyway tell me what you think. It's on the attached PDF.