120km/h car feels unstable
 

99 integra gs, koni yellow shocks, h&r sport springs

driving on the highway lately my car feels very unstable.. it's not shaking uncontrollably but it does seem to sway and jerk - sometimes

i usually only feel this when i'm going 120 or so. the slower i go, the less i feel it.... it feeling is exactly as if the car had a flat tire. i know pressure is good, the tires are not bald and have lots of tread... it actually happened when i had snow tires and i switched to my all seasons last week and i still feel it. it feels very unsafe and i'm always nervous driving it now.

tires are all at proper optimal pressure
lugs are all at 85 ft-lbs
lots of brake pad left on all 4 calipers

what can or should i be checking? alignment? possibly missing cotter pins and some nuts came loose? i don't know.. i'll be jacking it up this afternoon to take a quick peek but i at least would like to know what could be possible causes.

i need to read the whole post before i respond opps

Wouldn't hurt to get an allignment. Could be a wheel or two is really out of ballance, but if its happening with both sets of wheels, seems unlikely. Make sure all nuts and bolts are there, and everything is tight. Could be uneven wear on a tire. If you have bad allignment that has caused an odd wear pattern, and now you may have put them back on in a different position and its causing a weird vibration.

sounds like alignment to me... you should also mention what rims and tires you have. lower profile tires are much more responsive to ruts and grooves in the road and will jerk the steering wheel on occassion.

oops...

14" steel winter rims, magna grip tires, 185/65/14
15" oem ls mesh, bridgestone potenza, 195/60/15

it's either your bushings are shot, or your alignment is screwed. Also bad bushings will screw up an alignment as the bushings move/change under acceleration, braking turning and coasting, ask me how I know.

It could possibly be your front ball joints

All joints seemed to be in tact, no boots ripped either. All the nuts and cotter pins were in place. I might try an alignment but I just got an alignment done at Gilman's last summer. If I'm to inspect the bushings, what would I be looking for? Dry? Cracked? Also, which specific bushings? I was reading around Honda-Tech and I found that bushings should be replaced as needed as opposed to me getting an entire energy black kit.

look for cracked, dry rot, peeling, stripped, misshaped or even missing bushings. Check both sides as well.


In 2005 I had two alignments within 6 months of each other. I never changed the height of the car, only swapped rims...finally I brought it to gilman and was talking to him about my alignment specs not staying and first thing he said was bushings. When we changed Fuzzy's lower control arms for newer ones night and day difference same with once we changed platty p's over. Shitty part was that they needed another alignment.

Maybe its just windy outside.

I'm going to swap out those Omni rear LCA's ... I've read they have bushing problems..... I'll see how the car reacts then.

i know this is an old post but did u fix the problem, im having the exact same problem and i have the same set up (koni's with H&R)

are the tires feathered? (uneven wear on the outter edges of the tires)?
when's the last time you got the rims balanced?
did you hit a bad pothole or something, maybe bent a rim?

it all started to happen when i put my winter tires on my stock rims and i got them balanced that same day....didn't hit anything bad....so no idea what it can be??:confused:

Were the snow tires new or used?

Maybe you need your wheels to be balanced. Im sure its that.

maybe a front bearing

New

They were balanced when I put them, not even a month ago??.

could be bad tires, it happens sometimes or the person who balanced them did not do it properly.

if your checking your front end you need the wheels off the ground, you can check the inner and outer tie rods by moving the wheel back and forth but you would need a pry bar to check your ball joints or control arm bushings.

if any of the above is bad enough on the car to make it sway or handle bad...you would be hearing lots of noise too.

i think your problem is camber wear on the tires or the front toe is out(positive)