Vibration gremlin. I'm ready to crush the car.
quarters
Council Member
I've had my 90 civic wagon for 12 years and i feel like i've been battling vibration for as long as i can remember.
anything over 67mph and i get the vibrations. it usually comes on gradually and get's worse until 90mph and then it MIGHT go away, or becomes so perfectly rythmatic that it just seems like it goes away. .
long sweeping turns with highway speed bring the vibration on slightly earlier, at around 63mph, hitting a bump in the road might bring it on earlier as well.
in the last year we did a blitz...
- 10.3" brakes with new rotors. had 9.5" bearings done, no difference, 10.3" bearings seem fine, shakes.
- new lower joints
- new skunk2 pro upper arms
- koni yellows/itr springs.
- steering rack gone over, new inners/outters/mount bushings/end bushing
- alignment... shakes
- different rims and brand new tires. shakes
- balanced 5 different times... shakes.
- new axles... shakes
- new radius rod bushings... shakes
- new lower control arm bushings, sway bar links... i really can't even think of anything else to replace.
Myself, nor a few mechanics can find anything loose or in need of replacing in the front end of the car.
COULD this be a chassis flex issue/bent?
CAN a bad upper shock bushing cause this? how can i check them.
crossmember?
in other words what CAN cause vibration after replacing everything i can think of?
i will paypal $30 to the person that points me in the direction of solving this.
you can search my posts and see that this vibration issue has been going on for a long long time.
anything over 67mph and i get the vibrations. it usually comes on gradually and get's worse until 90mph and then it MIGHT go away, or becomes so perfectly rythmatic that it just seems like it goes away. .
long sweeping turns with highway speed bring the vibration on slightly earlier, at around 63mph, hitting a bump in the road might bring it on earlier as well.
in the last year we did a blitz...
- 10.3" brakes with new rotors. had 9.5" bearings done, no difference, 10.3" bearings seem fine, shakes.
- new lower joints
- new skunk2 pro upper arms
- koni yellows/itr springs.
- steering rack gone over, new inners/outters/mount bushings/end bushing
- alignment... shakes
- different rims and brand new tires. shakes
- balanced 5 different times... shakes.
- new axles... shakes
- new radius rod bushings... shakes
- new lower control arm bushings, sway bar links... i really can't even think of anything else to replace.
Myself, nor a few mechanics can find anything loose or in need of replacing in the front end of the car.
COULD this be a chassis flex issue/bent?
CAN a bad upper shock bushing cause this? how can i check them.
crossmember?
in other words what CAN cause vibration after replacing everything i can think of?
i will paypal $30 to the person that points me in the direction of solving this.
you can search my posts and see that this vibration issue has been going on for a long long time.
Comments
When you say "new axles" did this include both new inner and outer CV's? Otherwise Im outa ideas as you seem to have covered the lot!
driver side is a few months old now, it was a reman.
Sorry, terminology must differ for us. So this includes both CV's?
What about intermediate shaft bearing?
no intermediate shaft on USDM d16a6's. there is a long axle and a short axle, they both go right into the diff on the tranny. when i say i changed an axle, it means both CV's on the ends as well
I did a new test though. In the 58-63mph zone, before vibration, if i crank the wheel either direction and dart across each lane, i feel the vibration slightly. So my guess is that it's there, but i don't feel it all the time. Turning the wheel definitely has something to do with it. Acceleration or not, the vibration happens. WTF!@ it's gotta be an axle or rims/tires... it friggin has to be!
Maybe one of your axles itself is out of balance? Cheap axles or crappy remanufacture? Just like wheels/tires, everything that rotates, if out of balance, has a certain rotational speed where it could start to harmonically vibrate. Just like with out of balance wheels, this would start to happen at a certain rpm, grow, then go away within a small rpm range, and then possibly come back at a higher speed (multiple modes of harmonic vibration).
Rotating parts aside, I would guess steering rack or something there but it seems like you've gone over all of that stuff.
I used to work in the engineering department of a company that makes alignment equipment and wheel balancers. It was our experience that the overwhelming majority of vibration complaints were caused by the wheel/tire assembly. The internal construction of tires can have uniformity problems that can create very difficult to diagnose vibration issues (bargain tires seem to have this problem more). Example: one sidewall may have a small section that is soft/hard, or more/less compliant. To address this, our company makes (and currently holds a patent on) the kind of balancer that uses the rotating drum that presses against the tire tread as it spins on the balancer... simulating the weight of the vehicle pressing the tire into the road. This device measures problems with imperfections/inconsistencies in the tire's internal construction in addition to vibrations caused by weight issues. If the balancer machine your tire shop uses is a simpler type of machine, they very well might not be able detect this type of problem. They may get the tire to balance out weight wise, but the machine ignores the soft spot or whatever.
You can search this page for a tire shop that has a "Road Force" balancer near you: http://www.gsp9700.com/search/findgsp9700.cfm If you end up going this route, I suggest you have a conversation with the service manager - tell them all you've done, and ask them to turn off the machine's "Smart Weight" feature. Of course, all this technology is useless if the tire shop doesn't have a tire tech who is properly trained on what the machine can do. Most shops in the USA put the noob grunts on tire duty, while places like Europe require a great deal of specialized training before a tech is allowed to perform tire service, so... your mileage may vary, as they say.
You could also try rotating tires to see if you detect the source of the vibration moving to a different corner of the car... vibration in the steering wheel or not, etc. This may give you a clue.
Nice. Good advice right there.
Edit: I see there is one near me after all!!!!! I'll call them and give it a try.
I would still check your motor mounts out as well, since it's free! I had completely forgotten how annoying/mysterious it was when I had that bad mount on my old car until I read through this thread.
road force balance accomplished nothing, just another wasted $50. bringing my total of wasted money up to almost $1000. this is total bullshit. anyone wanna buy a wagon?
- Jacked up LF wheel under the control arm, started the car and let it run in 2nd gear while i inspected the rotation. Axle shaft is moving up and down slightly as it rotates, wheel moving up and down, front to back slightly as it rotates. side to side, nothing really to mention. This side has a new reman EMPI axle.
- Jacked up RF wheel under control arm, started the car and let it run in 2nd gear while i inspected the rotation. Axle shaft is moving up and down slightly as it rotates, wheel moving up and down, front to back slightly more than the LF as it rotates. side to side, nothing really to mention. This is the side with the brand new Cardone axle, not reman.
Is my differential fudged maybe? I get no noise to speak of.
I would just visually inspect them like you did. If nothing appears to be cracked or worn too bad you're probably good. Prybar should show you any seriously bad mounts. If you're going to rev the engine to check the mounts, make sure you are in gear so the trans is spinning as well (foot on the brake, and stand to the side of the car while doing this - also don't have anything else you wouldn't want to hit in front of you!) If you don't notice any excessive movement of the motor or vibrations throughout the chassis you're probably good.
Few things to test if you haven't already:
1. Does the problem seem to be rpm or speed related? Downshift to another gear when you feel the vibration and see if it goes away. Speed would indicate something in the axles/tires/rotors/etc. Rpm may be more of a motor issue.
2. When cornering hard, can you feel any of the vibration? Like in a parking lot or anything? May be CVs or steering assembly if so.
3. Put the car in neutral and coast when you get the vibration...does it change go away?
4. Depress your clutch when you get the vibration...does it change or go away?
5. Any effect of acceleration/deceleration on vibration? Braking?
Helps to do the last two down a hill to preserve your speed. I've heard of clutch misalignment or clutch/flywheel imbalance causing unwanted vibrations at certain speeds.
2. low speed u-turns, no clicking, everything fine
3. will test more
4. will test more
5. deceleration/acceleration don't really seem to matter, it's a certain speed thing, and it can be worse sometimes than other times. sometimes 120kmh is butter, but 95%, it's like churning butter. braking is fine.
maybe an on car brake lathe is in order?
Btw in my last post I meant to say to do 3 and 4 while coasting down a hill to preserve speed...
Also when checking the braking, just apply very light brake pressure and note any changes.
not awd, it's front wheel drive.
Another thing: the NEW axles you can buy are chinese BS, and usually inferior to reman units. I've replaced the same axle three times in two weeks chasing a similar harmonic.
I can attest to having a shitty cheap axle give me vibrations as well.
Also yeah I guess if you haven't actually changed all of your wheel bearings that's a good place to start. Not exactly sure what you mean by 9.5" and 10.3" bearings up at the top. My roommates wagovan has a bad (or maybe two) rear wheel bearings right now and it definitely gives a horrible vibration on the highway. However it is very obvious that the vibration is coming from the rear of the car, and it's not necessarily just at a certain speed.
i now have 2 spare axles for each side. ghey.
Gotcha. For some reason I assumed you had already changed out your wheel bearings in the front and back. Now it sounds like you've messed with the fronts but not the rear bearings. I would definitely recommend replacing the rear wheel bearings like bam and 503 suggested. If I'm not mistaken they are much easier to change than the fronts, as they are bolted in rather than pressed.
I wish I could hear exactly what your car is doing because I've been driving around my roommate's wagovan for the past week or so and it seems to have a bad rear wheel bearing or two. It starts to vibrate pretty bad at higher speeds, and is accompanied with an almost howling-like road noise that goes along with the vibration. Like a woo-woo-woo-woo-woo sound hahaha...but he hasn't made any attempt to fix the problem yet.
jacked car up, both tires on, let 'er rip in 5th and brought it up to 120 and then vibration.
took tires off, let 'er rip in 5th, went all the way to 150km and felt nothing.
brought passenger side down so only driver side would spin. felt wobbly and vibration at 70kmh which changed with severity until 100kmh when i shut it down.
brought driver side down so only passenger side would spin. felt terrible at 60kmh and i shut it down.
My brother (former honda dealership tech) said 99% it's rim/tires/balance. what are the thoughts on this? i can't argue with the logic.