i generally don't like asking for help, but i have spent several hours trying to figure out the cause of this problem with no success. here's the scenario.

car: 96 civic with b16a2, i/h/e, hasport replacement mounts & es inserts, skunk coilovers/illuminas, es master bushing set, everything else important is stock.

on my way to an hpde at laguna seca i noticed that every now and again, the steering wheel would twitch to the right, maybe an 1/8th of a turn. everything was fine while on track. on the way home, it continued to happen, and as time went by, it happened more often and more violently, to the point where i would be fighting to keep the wheel straight at highway speeds. if i let go while it was happening (much to my wife's dismay) the car would immediately throw it self to the right. when it stopped, the car would track perfectly straight. this happened at slow and fast speeds, under acceleration, coasting, and while braking.

so far i have done the following:

-inspected brake pads and returned to stock used pads. no abnormal wear on pads or rotor.
-inspected tires. with the car in the air, i spun each tire by hand with a light on it. no imperfections on front tires (75% azenis, mounted a month ago). rears each have a flat spot or two, so i swapped them and there was no difference. air pressure is good on all four.
-inspected hubs for play - found none. both axle nuts are tight.
-re-torqued all front suspension bolts, nothing amiss. did same for rear, and check comptech sway/tie. all good.
-adjusted skunk coilovers to reasonable height, illuminas to 3 of 5.
-front sway is ok, endlinks still there.
-turned steering wheel lock to lock: no inconsistency, smooth.
-wheels were torqued to 80 before road test.
-i had the car aligned four weeks ago.

worthy of mention:

-there has been a tear in the driver's side outer cv boot for a long time, small, but enough to eject grease from time to time. there is also grease slowly leaking from both front axles at the clamp on the outer's, but not much.
-the piston boot on the passenger front caliper is torn fairly severely, but this is new as i change pads often and never noticed before.


misc

-if i accelerate with my foot on the brake slightly, there is no jerking.
-there really isn't any noise coming from the axles, which i know is the telltale sign of a bad axle.
-i didn't have any bad off's at laguna seca to contribute to this, but i was raining all day and my car doesn't see much rain in southern california.

i've narrowed it down to two possibilities.
1. passenger side caliper is sticking due to torn boot.
2. driver's side axle bad, perhaps passenger too.

i plan on rebuilding a spare set of calipers this weekend, since that's the cheapest alternative. if that does not fix it, i will consider refurbed axles.


well, if you've made it this far, for you. so have i missed anything? please contribute if you have something somewhat intelligent to add, don't just tell me to get an alignment (i'll probably do that when this is all over anyway) or rotate my tires or something.

i throw myslef upon the mercy of honda-tech.

 

I don't think it is your axles, i've had torn boots and clicking (bad) cv joints for almost 6 months now with nothing like that happening. It could be the brake seizing, but did you consider tire tramlining. Thats where the tire tracks grooves in the road. I used to own a camaro that would rip the wheel outta my hands if i hit a groove... I dunno just one more thing for you to consider.

 

sounds like bumpsteer, like "daily driver" said, where your tires follow the ruts in the road. my car used to do it BAD with my old yokohama A520s, cause they had a rediculously stiff sidewall. my new AVS ES100s aren't as bad. and when i put my stock 14s back on with the winter tires, it doesn't happen at all.

if you have an extra set of wheels/tires (preferably stock size) try driving with them on. if it persists, then you have a more serious problem.

 

Are you absolutely sure that it isn't a bad right front wheel bearing? Sometimes they won't make much noise when they just begin to fail. I had a car that behaved like that and it was a wheel bearing. Or maybe some bad grit got into your cv and it only pulls like that when it has to *chew* on a piece.

 

well, tonight i'm going to swap the front tires, and i picked up a grease gun and i'm going to shoot em full of grease (the cv boots) and see what happens. i'll be picking up the caliper rebuild kit tomorrow, but hopefully i'll know what it is by then.

i don't buy the tire/road thing. i've been daily driving azenis for almost two years, easily three full sets, without issue. when the car was in the air, i shined (shone?)a bright light on each and spun it by hand, watching closely for even the slightest inconsistency, of which there was none on the fronts. the flat spots on the rear tires were extremely evident this way. if there was, i imagine it would be there all the time, not just here and there.

i'll post back after i road test. thanks for all your input.

 

shamefully, i found that the lower ball joint on the passenger side was not tight, i was able to turn it by hand when i found it. thankfully the cotter pin kept it from coming out further. i torqued it to 40~, checked the other two that were just a little under-torqued, swapped the font wheels, and viola.



shame on me. thanks for your input.

i'm still doing my brakes though - that will be fun.

 

Thats what i was going to mention to you! You beat me to it!

 

I been having the same problemmm I"m checkin mine out tonite!!!

 

sounds like the same thing that happened to me, I had a tear in my cv boot and a small rock got into it. It was really weird becuase it didn't do it all the time.

 

so did torquing those nuts solve ur problem? i think what your refering to is called bump steering. it happens on mine too, and is driving me crazy. it jerks the wheel outt amy hand, and my steering is a little weird. idunno whats wrong either. oh and i doubt its the cv joints, and putting grease in them might not help. i know that if you have atear, there is a chance dirt n sheit got in there, and i wouldnt drive on that. when the axel goes, the whole join will rip off and cause LOTS of damage to your suspension, so just in case you were thinking of putting a new boot on it, i wouldtn recommend it.

 

i do still get some bump steer, especially after having installed the es master bushing kit. now the whole suspension is much more influenced by road conditions, (which was the goal) but what was happening before was totally not right. if i hadn't fixed it that night, i was going to take some video of the wheel jerking - it was moving like it was possessed, even on a brand new, freshly paved road.

well hopefully this posts helps someone else out.

 

Tie Rods?