excess play in steering
- Thread starter custard
- Start date
This is an issue that I've never ever seen brought up here. I'm interested in what the final diagnosis outcome will be. The only mention of it in the service manual is on page 17-6 which only says to check all of the steering components if the play exceeds 5mm (0.2 in).
your tie rod ends are worn. Could be inner or outer or both. A lot of people have this and are completely unaware. I'd guess more than 50% of the NSX's on the road aren't as tight as they should be. Aftermarket ones are made by jeff at carbon6... high quality ones. for the inner you will have to buy oem for now.
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It depends on how good the alignment guy is. The issue is that it is possible to align the car to what looks like spec, but the steering wheel will be off, because of the play. If the car is on a lift and you hold one wheel really firmly and wiggle the other you may feel there is no play... and therefore, good tie rod ends. But if you then turn the wheels, and then try the same test, you may get a slight wiggle.
The reason I know all of this is because I have my car aligned at a performance race shop that aligns all the racecars around. And even they couldn't catch my slightly worn ends (after only 20K miles) at first but a lot of testing and experimentation later did in fact confirm both inner and outer tie rod ends to be worn. Once they were replaced, the car tracked absolutely perfect with a perfectly centered straight wheel. No play. The tell tail sign is when the car doesn't seem to HOLD the aligment for very long. It goes on the rack, looks good, gets driven, goes back on the rack and now is slightly off.
I think for some people especially on street use it may not be critical or even that noticeable but if you are looking for really tight tolerances you notice it.
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