Does your steering wheel feel loose to where at highway speeds, the bump steer can be pretty dangerous? Can you turn your wheel back and forth like this...




Yet your wheels and tires don't turn with the steering wheel?

Well I have the $30 cure for you!!! It is a special 40MM wrench you order through Honda that attaches to the lock nut on the steering rack. You will also need a 14MM open ended wrench to adjust the tightness. This works for both manual racks and power racks. I am doing this to a 5th gen. civic so should work on 94-01 tegs as well. It may or may not work for 6th gen civics.



What you need to do is jack up your drivers side and remove the front drivers side wheel to give you access to the steering rack.

You will insert the special wrench from Honda like so...





You will want to loosen the lock nut with said wrench so that you can use the 14mm wrench to tighten steering rack like so...




What you want to do is tighten the bolt as far as it goes and then back it off a quarter rotation to put it back into factory spec. You may want to adjust back or forth depending on preference of tightness. A quarter rotation was perfect for me so I didn't adjust any more. Once you get it adjusted how you like, tighten the lock nut and lower your car back down and take it for a spin. It should have the tight steering that it did almost 20 years ago and it is alot cheaper than replacing the entire steering rack!!!

I would recommend having the alignment checked out but is not necessary. I have made this adjustment to my civic as well as my lexus and neither needed any adjustment in the alignment.

 

Hey I'm new to this forum, kinda.. haha I'm not really good with computers. Either way, I seen this post and got in touch with my local Honda dealer. It should be in soon but i was wondering do you think it would be a good idea to just pull the entire rack and replace the seals and such. Also, would you know where I would be able to get a decent diagram of the rack and pinion system.

 

Here's the service manual diagram:

 

what causes a loose steering wheel ¿


Posted from Honda-tech.com App for Android

 

^^^ Age and wear in the rack.
Nice info.

 

280,000 miles with the original rack can cause the loose feeling. Thanks Ron for that diagram.

 

Before you go through this process, you should check your tie rod ends. Bad tie rod ends can also cause loose steering.

 

I'm a need to do this

 

Good point!!! I should note that every component on my front suspension has been updated when I swapped my knuckles to install integra brakes and also installed a ex sway bar.

New inner and outer tie rods
New upper and lower ball joints
New ES bushings

The only thing that had not been replaced was my steering rack.

 

good write up ive been wanting to try and fix this for awhile now

 

I had no idea about this. Don't remember any play though. I'll check it out.

Thanks for the heads up OP!

 

Great info!

 

Will this fix work on a 2010 Honda fit?

 

Can’t you use a regular 40mm spanner?

 

Whatever works for you. If only we knew who the 'Former User' was.....

 

That’d be Ron j righh

 

Does this work on 6th gen civics?

 

It does, see below for the 6th gen FSM page regarding the rack adjustment:

 

Amazing
I have to show my mechanic because I have new front suspension but the steering wheel still feels loose and only intermittently. This might be the trick.

 

Heads up, I tried this adjustment on my '99 rack with 200k miles after replacing the inner and outer tie rods, but in the end the rack was too worn for any adjustment to make a difference. It is now two years later and I just had a new Edelmann (2028) rack installed (with the integra pinion mod) and the steering response and feedback is absolutely incredible. Even better than my 1990 Miata, I should have done it years ago.