johnnycr

I've been trying to locate the source of a front end noise. All front end suspension is new as of 2021 (control arms, ball joints, struts, tie rods, sway bar links) and everything seems to be tight and in good shape. The noise I hear seems to happen in two situations. The first is when I first put the car in reverse and back out of the driveway in the morning. As soon as I start to move or turn the steering wheel, I hear a pop. The other time I can get the noise to happen is when I jerk the steering wheel while the car is not moving. I hear a pop every time I jerk the wheel. I had my son jerk the wheel the other day and I felt around and listened and the source seems to be the steering rack. Is this a common source for a popping sound? The car has 216k miles and the rack has never been replaced. After doing some research online it looks like there is a steering rack guide that I can adjust. I wonder if I should mess with that at all, or if I should just go ahead and replace the rack. Does anyone have experience with this?

Colin42

Did you do the inner tie rods? Or just the outer?

BrotatoChip

Brakes popping when changing direction is fairly normal in Hondas.

You can check the steering rack guide by grabbing where the inner tie rods connect, wiggle up and down. There should be little to no play.

johnnycr

I wanted to follow up on this to bring some closure. I found the source of the noise. Thanks to Colin42 for the question about the inner tie rods. I did replace both the inner and outer tie rods in 2021. I was surprised when I got new tires and an alignment in the fall of 2022, because the shop told me the passenger side inner tie rod was bad. The part was approximately a year old at that point. I had them go ahead and replace it. Last month when I was under the car looking for the source of the noise once again, I finally found it. My son was turning the steering wheel side to side and I was grabbing different components to see if I could feel any play in anything. When I grabbed the passenger side inner tie rod close to where it threads into the steering rack, I did feel a slight amount of play. I did not inspect that tie rod closely before because it had been replaced twice in the last 3 years. But Colin42's question convinced me I should double check. Once I got the tie rod out, I was able to take a closer look at it. It appears that the tie rod is actually two pieces that are pressed together near the joint where it threads into the rack. You can see a seam there. I was able to twist the tie rod slightly. If I twisted it as far as it would go, it got tight and there was no play. But if I twisted it back, there was obvious play, but less than 1mm of movement.

Now, for my theory. For quite a while I've had vibration while braking. I discovered last summer that one of the caliper slide bolts was seized in the bracket on that front passenger tire. I freed it up and that smoothed out the braking a bit, but not completely. A couple weeks ago I put a dial indicator on the rotor and found that it was warped, which is not surprising considering I drove with a seized caliper bolt for a while. I put the dial indicator on the hub, too, just to be sure that wasn't the issue. When I replaced the inner tie (again!) last week I decided to get new pads and rotors as well. Now it brakes very smoothly. So, my theory is that the seized bolt caused the rotor to warp, and that the extra vibration while braking caused that inner tie rod to go bad at the seam where the two pieces were pressed together. Hopefully, with new brakes now, this won't happen again.

Colin42

Glad you found it