civic alignment issue

[dlb]

i corrected the toe on my wife's 92 civic a while back. now, while the steering wheel is centered, the car drives straight. but if you let go of the wheel, it turns on its own and the car pulls to one side a bit. the car doesn't have any obvious suspension issues, the brakes do not drag, and it does not appear to have adjustable camber so my question is: if the toe is correct but the car still pulls to one side, does this mean the front springs need to be replaced? they don't look saggy to me but that's the first thing i think of. also, being a 2wd, i suppose the rear end alignment could also be the culprit, but i have no experience with rear end alignments and am not sure how much of a role it plays. anyone have any thoughts?

[irowiki]

On a car with struts all around, the rear alignment is just as important as the front when it comes to tracking properly!

[marlinh]

Was it pulling before you adjusted the toe? I think there is an adjustment on the Honda to adjust camber. I can't remember where it is. I think it is shims added to upper control arm or something to that effect. It's not as obvious as the Tercel. Are any of the tires worn weird? Does it pull quickly to the side or just slowly. Sometimes road crown affects handling. Have you checked this drift on other roadways?

http://www.aligncraft.com/terms/terms.html
Following quite taken from the above web site:
'Road Crown and Camber
A crowned road means that the outside/right hand side of the lane is lower than the left side of the lane. This improves the drainage of the road but adversely affects vehicle handling. Road crown must be compensated for in alignment settings because a vehicle driving on a crowned road leans to the right, causing some weight transfer to the right, and the camber changes slightly more positive. This combination creates a pull or drift to the right. Most alignment technicians adjust the vehicle with a slightly more positive camber, usually 1/4°, on the left to compensate for the road crown. This slightly more positive camber will not cause a noticeable pull when driving on a flat road. However, if camber is unequal from side to side with a difference greater than 1/2°, the vehicle will pull to the side with the most positive camber. If the specifications allow, 0° to ±.5° is usually best for tire life and vehicle handling.'

You can check road height by parking on level ground and comparing both sides with a tape measure. It could be tire pull. Swap tires from side to side to see if there is a change. Make sure tire pressures are the same. Even tires that don't have strange wear patterns in them can cause a pull like you describe.

[dlb]

yes, it was pulling before i adjusted the toe. that's why i checked the toe. i found it out slightly but it still pulls now after adjustment. the tires are all evenly worn. it's a gradual pull to the side but it's fairly severe.

i've thought about road crown but i think this is more severe than crown can account for. i wish there was an easy way to check camber. i wonder if i could just bring a level with me to a flat parking lot and use that to check camber.

[marlinh]

Has it always had the pull? Did it show up all of a sudden? After hitting a curb or something. Toe usually doesn't cause a pull. I would try swapping tires to see if there is any change. If the front end is tight, spring for a shop to do an alignment.

[dlb]

it's jenn's car so i'm not sure when it developed the pull or if it was sudden...or if my dear wife hit a carb hard and didn't tell me. but none of the wheels are bent, anyway. oh yeah, and i have swapped the tires around, no difference. everything felt good in the front end last time i had it apart (though that was two years ago now) and there aren't any clunks or rattles that i've noticed. if i was really diligent, i would pull the front end apart to manually inspect everything but i don't think i should be crawling back under any cars yet. so maybe i will take it to my local alignment place.

[tercel4wdrules]

Caster is the alignment angle that will cause pulling. However, on a lot of imports, caster is not adjustable. That can be verified if you get the vehicle's alignment checked at a shop. Also, a tire can cause what is known as a 'radial pull'. You can test this theory by swapping the tire - if it pulls to the left, then swap the front left tire with the left rear tire and see if the pulling goes away. There's another way of finding out the source of these annoying problems. Hunter Engineering makes a machine called a road force balancer and it can detect pulling and tire/run out issues and it will even tell the operator where to mount the tires in relation to the vehicle to avoid radial pull (checks each tires concity).

[keith]

It is the camber, not the caster that can cause pull, but on this era Honda, I'd start with the rear alignment first. The rear wheels have to be aligned first. You can do a quick check by following the car and see if it is tracking straight or crabbing (aka dog walking) down the road. That is where the rear tires are off set from the front as the car goes down the road, like an airplane landing in a crosswind.

A sticking valve in the power steering rack can also cause pulling. Jack up the front end, start the engine and let go of the steering wheel. If it turns on its own, the rack needs work/replacement.

[keith]

BTW, the caster on the front is adjustable but not the camber. You can check the camber by parking on level ground and using a carpenters level to check. Check the rear as well as a rear wheel out of camber can cause pulling.

We had a 93 Civic and it did not hold alignment well.

[dlb]

i just checked the civic FSM and found that the rear wheels have adjustable toe. that's so weird, i wonder why.

this car has manual steering so scratch that from the list of possibilities.

how is the caster adjustable? isn't it determined by the angle that the strut mounts to the vehicle? it seems like there would have to be shims or some adjustable dial to change the caster but i've never noticed anything like that.

i'll check the front and rear toe and camber soon and report back.

[dlb]

ok, i just found in the FSM how to adjust the camber on the civic. the upper arm mounts to the upper arm anchor, and the angle at which is does determines the camber. there are marks, apparently. looks like they should be a real gas to see once everything is in there. oh well.

so the rear wheel toe was good, the front was toed out about 1/8", and my super crappy camber check showed the front right wheel to apparently have less negative camber than the other wheels, which would pull the car to the right so that seemed to make sense. i corrected the front toe and while i was there, i pulled on stuff and ta da, found the upper ball joint is bad. so that is now on my to do list. hopefully that corrects things.

[dlb]

an interesting note that is somewhat related: while i was in alignment mode, i decided to adjust the toe on our f350 since i have known for a while it was slightly out but hadn't gotten to the job yet. i corrected it and went for a test drive but found it still pulls to the right slightly. this truck has the kingpin axle setup so camber and caster are not adjustable, so i looked closely at the tires. we bought them used a while back and they appeared fine but i can see now that the front right tire is more worn on the outside. the pull isn't horrible so we will live with it but i will try swapping the front tires to see how much difference it makes.

i love learning.

[keith]

The Civic uses a trailing arm from the front crossmember to the lower control arm. You can use shims in it, but it doesn't have very much range so it can only make a minor correction. I don't remember the camber being adjustable.

[Petros]

on your ford, we had an E350, same truck chaises but with a passenger van body. It was 2wd, so it had the twin I-beam front end, it was all over the road until I replaced all of the rubber bushings and parts with Urethane bushings, plus the ball joints and steering gear box, and had it aligned. Than it would finally hold a straight line while pulling a trailer. They had this cool plastic ball and socket to replace the ford squishy rubber donuts radius arm bushings, the kit was cheap too, like $9 per side. The 4wd front axle is different of course, but the same issues are present, I do not know where the heck the Ford engineer's minds were at when in comes to suspension (Chevy does a much better job here at least on their 2wd trucks), but without up grading all of the bushings, and making sure all of the tie-rods and ball joins were perfect, it was almost uncontrollable in a cross wind. Not what I want when taking my family on a camping trip.

[dlb]

i replaced the bad ball joint (it was REALLY bad but only evident once i separated it from the steering knuckle) but the civic stills pulls to the right about the same amount so i will be taking it in for an alignment soon. curious to see what the shop says.