Joined
·
3,709 Posts
I finally got my car up in the air at a buddy's garage and fixed my annoying steering wheel shake!
The problem was at lower speeds my steering wheel would constantly shimmy back and forth a bit, once I got to highway speed it would even out sometimes. Even worse, when I would use the brakes, the wheel would move about 3-4 times more back and forth. :shock: I would have to grab tight on the damn thing to keep it in line.
Thinking of all the possibilities of what could be wrong and the $$ I'd have to spend that I don't have, I put the front on jackstands and did my first test. I grabbed each front tire top and bottom and tried to shake it. Driver's side was rock solid, passenger side had some play in it :shock:
So I was happy for a moment that I found the area of the problem. I consulted my repair manual and thought it might be the lower balljoint. After taking the wheel off and looking at the components, plus the fact that my crx only has 127k on it, I thought that a balljoint was unlikely.
So I sat there trying to think of what could be wrong, meanwhile staring at the whole front suspension. Then eureka! I saw the hub retaining nut was not staked into the groove in the axle, and had moved counterclockwise! I couldn't believe it would be so simple, and hit it with the impact hoping it would tighten up. It did, barely at all, but it moved, and I bashed the hell out of it to stake it down in the groove/keyway. I put the wheel on and zero play just like the drivers side.
In the words of stimpy from ren & stimpy: Happy happy joy joy.
Then I was feeling lucky so I put in a missing wheel stud on the opposite side (which was kind of a b*tch), and made a new tail light gasket from cork-rubber to stop the waterfall I call a pass. corner light. Screw paying out the a$$ for a honda gasket.
So short version: I was hating my car, fixed it for almost zero dollars, super happy now.
The problem was at lower speeds my steering wheel would constantly shimmy back and forth a bit, once I got to highway speed it would even out sometimes. Even worse, when I would use the brakes, the wheel would move about 3-4 times more back and forth. :shock: I would have to grab tight on the damn thing to keep it in line.
Thinking of all the possibilities of what could be wrong and the $$ I'd have to spend that I don't have, I put the front on jackstands and did my first test. I grabbed each front tire top and bottom and tried to shake it. Driver's side was rock solid, passenger side had some play in it :shock:
So I was happy for a moment that I found the area of the problem. I consulted my repair manual and thought it might be the lower balljoint. After taking the wheel off and looking at the components, plus the fact that my crx only has 127k on it, I thought that a balljoint was unlikely.
So I sat there trying to think of what could be wrong, meanwhile staring at the whole front suspension. Then eureka! I saw the hub retaining nut was not staked into the groove in the axle, and had moved counterclockwise! I couldn't believe it would be so simple, and hit it with the impact hoping it would tighten up. It did, barely at all, but it moved, and I bashed the hell out of it to stake it down in the groove/keyway. I put the wheel on and zero play just like the drivers side.
In the words of stimpy from ren & stimpy: Happy happy joy joy.
Then I was feeling lucky so I put in a missing wheel stud on the opposite side (which was kind of a b*tch), and made a new tail light gasket from cork-rubber to stop the waterfall I call a pass. corner light. Screw paying out the a$$ for a honda gasket.
So short version: I was hating my car, fixed it for almost zero dollars, super happy now.
