I have a 91 crx si with eibach pro-kit, koni yellows, and poly bushings. Here's the deal, when turning, the car wants to keep going in that direction. It does not want to return going straight if I let go of the wheel, it tends to want to go even more in the that direction. Also, in higher speed corners, it does not feel stable at all. I have an event at lime rock on the 26th and need to get this taken care of before then. Any ideas? Thank in advance.

 

I'm probably misunderstanding you, but why are you letting go of the wheel?

 

what club are you running with on the 26th? I'll be there on friday the 27th. Sorry I couldn't help with your question.

s

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JeffS &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'm probably misunderstanding you, but why are you letting go of the wheel? </TD></TR></TABLE>

well, when autocrossing, in between corners, to get the car to go straight again, I normally can let go of the wheel with my 95 civic si and the wheel will slide in my hands until I decide I want to stop letting it slide. With the crx, thats not happening, it wants to continue turning, and if I let the wheel slide it will turn full lock in that direction, instead of going straight. Hard to explain I guess. Even when driving on the street, when you turn your steering wheel you normally feel some sort of resistance on the wheel, with or without power steering. Not with my crx, it's very strange.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by stevel &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what club are you running with on the 26th? I'll be there on friday the 27th. Sorry I couldn't help with your question.

s</TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm running with CART, it's a time trail.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by tunes12 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">well, when autocrossing, in between corners, to get the car to go straight again, I normally can let go of the wheel with my 95 civic si and the wheel will slide in my hands until I decide I want to stop letting it slide.</TD></TR></TABLE>That's a bad idea. First off you can't control the rate of the turn, you can't make it smooth enough, and if you spin out you have no clue where straight is on the steering wheel so you'll be in trouble. You're doing a time-trial so this is going to be important. Preferably you want to stop spinning before you hit the walls... You want something short of a death-grip, but still firm. Drive the car. Don't let it drive you.

My best guess to your question is that there's less torque steer on the crx or that the steering is just built differently. Did you buy the car modified? or do you know when in the modifications this started occuring?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bork &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">That's a bad idea. First off you can't control the rate of the turn, you can't make it smooth enough, and if you spin out you have no clue where straight is on the steering wheel so you'll be in trouble. You're doing a time-trial so this is going to be important. Preferably you want to stop spinning before you hit the walls... You want something short of a death-grip, but still firm. Drive the car. Don't let it drive you.

My best guess to your question is that there's less torque steer on the crx or that the steering is just built differently. Did you buy the car modified? or do you know when in the modifications this started occuring?</TD></TR></TABLE>

OK, let me clarify something. I guess I should not have said anything about letting the steering wheel slide in my hands because it seems as though I'm just going to get driving tips from people. I'm pretty sure I know how to drive fairly well, trust me I wouldn't let the wheel slide in my hands at a time trial, I was talking about autocrosses. Anyway, that's besides the point. The car is definetely not handling the way it should, it feels quite dangerous actually. I have no resistance in the steering wheel. For example, when taking a right turn, you turn the wheel to the right, and you should feel some resistance in the wheel, wanting to go straight again. My car does not have this resistance. It wants to keep turning. It follows the contours in the road WAY too much. It happenned after swapping springs, shocks and bushings. It has been aligned by honda, maybe not right? I'm just looking for clues as to what could be causing this: bad alignment, wheel offset, etc. etc. Thanks

 

Caster?

 

Get an alignment.

Dan

 

Here's what I did about caster. On a crx, caster is not adjustable, so I machined the ends of the radius rods, or whatever they're called, so that I could give the car more caster, and put spacers in there to adjust to my liking. At first I gave it quite a bit of caster, too much actually, and it helped this problem that I explained but during higher speed cornering the car was incredibly unstable. The steering became very light and the car wandered. So I thought by bringing the caster back a bit, still more positive than stock, it would solve both problems. Nope. So it seems with lots of positive caster I solved the low speed, no resistance in the steering wheel, wants to continue turning problem, but very unstable while cornering when up to speed. With stock caster, or even a little bit more, the car has the problem stated above, but I don't know about up to speed situations because I imagine it would be impossible to control. So thanks for the suggestion, but it seems that no matter what I do with the caster, there's problems.

 

Are you actually using alignment equipment, or are you just doing this by "eye"?...

Dan

 

your experience with changing your caster goes against what normally happens when caster is adjusted. therefore, i would look there for the solution to your problem. also check toe and camber, since caster will change both of those settings as well.

nate

 

Are you moving caster in the correct direction? What it sounds like is you went the wrong way with it.

 

I have the same problem on my 90 si hb... it reminds me of bumpsteer almost....

 

The problem you describe is lack of self steering. Does the steering feel numb to you? Are the tires the stock size and offset? Since I've driven neither of the vehicles it could just be the nature of the car...