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Steering wanders on 03 civichi everyone, I am a new member looking for some help with my new civic.
I found a few steering threads on steering issues. But this is kind of weird,I bought the car at a city auction and it only had 38,000 miles on the clock.
It had a dead 12 volt battery so I bought a low budget battery and started driving it. The problem I’m having is that the car wanders. It just needs constant correcting.
I checked the car out and couldn’t find anything
wrong with the suspension and there were no worn parts . A tire rotation made no difference. A search turned up a couple identical complaints. One guy said he can live with it but it’s particularly bothersome on long drives.Another took several trips to the dealer where the lead tech said it was a problem and the service manager said it was normal. After being persistent,the shop replaced the rack and pinion and the control module and it was fixed. My friend has the same car and the steering is normal. This one turns smoothly but especially on the freeway, it just wanders and needs constant small corrections to keep going straight. There is no play in the wheel, it’s tight like all Honda’s that I have had. There are no codes,relearn procedures, centering procedures, just nothing to even try. Does anyone have any thoughts ? I am sure this problem is unique to electronic hybrid systems and I would really appreciate any thoughts or comments from someone who understands how the electric motor and module work together with the rack, and any experiences with working on this system.

 
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Have you had an alignment done?

 
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I've driven bone stock hybrids at 140,000 and 240,000 miles and a hybrid with an 8th gen civic steering wheel (1in smaller diameter than stock) at 140,000 miles, and from what I can tell the steering is just like that. Heavy and in constant need of adjustments. All vehicles had an alignment in OEM spec.

I've just scavenged the Hybrid service manual and there is no mention of any sort of tuning of the EPS. For troubleshooting they say that if there is no power assist then you should replace the motor. You could try that, but no guarantee that it will work. Maybe look around in EP3/Civic Si forums? I'm pretty sure that they have EPS as well. Not sure of any similarities though.

 
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I have an EPS rack in my Civic. Only time I noticed wandering was when my alignment was off.

 
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Initial cars with EPS have always had issues with on-center feel, sadly.
Even newer one have that. My '15 CX-5 also have some on-center feel/small wandering.
the initial generation seem to have that and variations between cars too. I remember one member that replaced everything and still could not find the issue

 
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I was thinking alignment, I took it to my alignment guy who drove it, and said he thinks it’s something else, he didn’t think an alignment would fix it.
but maybe I should get it checked

 
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Interesting,thanks. It’s really not that bad, but the alignment guy seemed to think it had a problem. I would really like to know
what makes it drive like that. My friend’s is fine. We were thinking about swapping the module and seeing if it made a difference?
Does anyone have an understanding of what the module does? I mean it would have a way to determine the center right ?

 
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I was thinking alignment, I took it to my alignment guy who drove it, and said he thinks it’s something else, he didn’t think an alignment would fix it.
but maybe I should get it checked

 
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it's more about the programming.
as speed increases it's better if the power steering reduces its assistance (you would not want a sneeze to suddenly change the direction your car is traveling to). Programming will make the steering stiffer (less assistance) as speed increases.
there might be that caster is increased in some cars to use the caster, but not sure, i don't work for car makers to know those details. Older EPS were still experimental, 2015 models still have some of it.
the hydraulic power steering had less or no programming issues, EPS have more of it.
Newer EPS would have better p[programming (hopefully, not all car makers would have worked too hard, sadly)

 
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That makes sense, there is a slight stiffness to it, at freeway speeds. And I was recalling the caster questions on the ASE test and was thinking caster. Is it possible to adjust on this car?

 
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macPherson suspension, hard to do caster