I took my car in for an alignment and they said I have a caster problem. Didn't give me the printout.

My passenger wheel looks like this



I replaced the LCA, it's still the same. I tightened the radius rod nut, no difference. Drivers side looks fine visually, but its the passenger side that's way off.

1990 civic, lowered on skunk2 coilovers and tokico blues. Otherwise stock

Could it be bent upper control arm? I'm hoping it's not the subframe...

 

could just be how it is. my integra was +.01 on one side and -.03 on the other. with a little corrective shimming i was able to get +.04 and +.03. anything you can do to bring the lower arms forward will add caster

 

Ha! That's my car. My problem was corrected by switching out the LCA. Did you switch it out for an OEM piece?

 

Yes haha I read every single thread I could find, and I replaced the LCA with a good one, but my old one wasn't bent. Could it be the UCA?

Mine is like -2.7* or something. The car pulls to the right soon as I let go of my wheel

 

Mine also pulled because of the caster. Make sure, and i mean make sure, that it is not bent,twisted, or in a bind. My LCA seemed perfectly fine even when i took it off. I compared it to the new one i purchased after it was off and it was pinched/bent where it connects to the subframe. It was not noticeable with the naked eye.

Check your subframe, look at all the bolts that hold the subframe, and if it's moved, you will be able to tell by there being clean circles of where the bolt use to be.

The UCA can be bent, however, i don't think it's that. I'm almost certain its that LCA.
Use a string to line up the UCA and check if it's straight.

Did you purchase the car like this or did some impact cause it?

 

agree with what others are saying. -2.7 is often a sign of damage. trying to scoot the sub frame or shim is done when you're at -.03 or a minor number near zero. i would be surprised if something isn't bent in your case. either the frame, sub or lca

 

There's no alignment needed to spot something is clearly bent.

Had the same issue myself (EK), though not thàt worse, after hitting a curbstone in the dark at low speed.

I changed out the lca's and the subframe. Changing the lca's didn't change anything. When (dis)mounting the lca's however a difference could be noticed at the subframe. Subframe swap cleared everthing (specs back to normal).

So what do you need to do: change to non-bent lca's to be certain, change to a non-bent subframe.

How is caster measured here? EDM it's measured in degrees-minutes (EK specs 1°40' +/-1°).

 

I changed LCA and it made no difference. Could a bent radius rod be the culprit? It doesn't look bent but who knows.

I'll check the subframe. How hard is a subframe swap?

 

Subframe arent the hardest thing in the world, deffinetly a pain in the butt.

Grab a couple buddys and some 6 packs and shouldnt be to hard

 

same, we measure it in degrees. the op was quoting neg 2.7deg which would be really out of wack since dead zero is about as negative as you really want to go. anything between zero deg to +2 deg drives pretty well.

 

OK, get it.

In my case (EK) it took my buddy - experienced Honda mechanic, EK9 owner - a short day's work, on his own, on his daddy's home garage floor

An alignment afterwards will show the result. Alignment afterwards is necessary in any case.

 

Okay. I'll check the subframe to see if it's shifted first.

Could a bent crossmember/radius rods cause this as well? but remember that its pushed back, not forward. I can't see the rods stretching or anything

 

Such damage isn't easy visible for the naked eye. You might feel/notice some difference when (dis)mounting the arms, at least we did, so that might point to some bending.

The crossmember is the subframe as far as I know.

By radius arms you mean the tie-rods (steering)? We didn't notice any diff.

 

the crossmember is the black thick thing under the radiator, the radius arms are the long skinny black rods attached to the front LCA. They attach tgo thru the crossmember via a 17mm nut and a big bushing/washer in the crossmember

 

you don't have a radius rod or a front crossmember....

 

so that picture really isn't your car you have a 90 civic?

 

first off eks and egs wont have radius rods or front crossmembers but his car will as will da's.

I know that on more than one occasion i have seen cracked crossmembers(the one that the steering rack goes on) on the ef chassis. it seemes to happen on the very bottom in the middle where your steering rack itself is. I would check this first. I have seen them do this with no major impact to cause it. check there first.

Next is to check the front crossmember where your radius rods go and see if it is bent. I highly doubt a bent radius rod would cause negatie camber as if it was bent it would try to pull the wheel forward not push it back.

if neither of those are it then at that point your subframe is probably the problem( it would be the problem if it was cracked as well) and you should replace it.

I highly doubt its the uca because that wouldnt give very much if any affect to your caster(atleast not as much as you have for sure)

hopefully this helped

 

^^ you and others just said he doesnt have radus rods but now your telling him to check them????
Also, his problem is the caster, not camber.

 

I have an EF. That pic was an example of what mine looks like.

I bought another crossmember yesterday, I'm hoping it fixes the problem b/c the subframe sounds like a pita

 

Maybe you should go read his entire post before you reply to something you have no clue about. His picture is just an example of what he has. He clearly stated that he has a 90 civic which would mean he has radius rods. Im not here to argue about this so i wont let it sidetrack the thread but really people need to start reading the whole post on here before they just start replying o stuff to boost there post count.


so to 98civdx

 

and im pretty sure my first post said nothing about his problem being a camber problem. Maybe you should study suspension parts before you come on here saying the stuff i told him to check has anything to do with camber.

And try giving him a little help rather than just finding someone to try and start a argument with. Seems like that all that honda-tech has goin for it lately is just a bunch of people who think they know everything and hating on the ones that they think know nothing.


Hopefully the crossmember solves your problem with the caster. Does is look like it is pulled back on that side? you should be able to tell with that much caster if it had moved.

 

 

The crossmember didn't fix anything

I've changed both the LCA and crossmember, so it looks like it's my subframe?

 

any chance you could compare the radius rod from the bad side to the one on the good side and make sure they are the same length. I dont know for sure but maybe the ef and da use different length radius rods and someone stuck a different one in there at some point in time. I would say try that as that is alot easier than changing your sub frame. also before you change it take a real good look at it and make sure that is the problem. Check for shifted bolts and bent or cracked spots on the subframe it self or around where it mounts to the body.

Also has the car been in a significant front end crash ever? if so it might need a frame rack to get it back to spec.

hope this helps

 

its your subframe then ..I crashed my 92 accord and it uses a similar suspension set up...my lca was bent almost like 90 degrees and the strut rods bolts broke off ..also my shock tower was tore up where the upper control arm bolted I changed every bit on the suspension and it was still off but after that I checked the subframe it was clearly bent where the lca bolts in ..I'm gonna change the subframe too next