Vibration when driving above 60mph and when braking

Hi All,

I am the owner of a Honda Accord Tourer 2.2 diesel, and somehow I have a vibration on my steering wheel and it feels as it is coming from the front driver side wheel (can feel it coming to my feet as well) on the speed between 60-75 (85mph + is okay when I went through Germany and Belgium)

Noticeable vibration also appears when braking. This would have indicated to me that its brake discs but they were done!
What was done in the past 3-4 months:
Brake discs changed to Mtec grooved and drilled discs / new pads
New ball joints
rear bushes, ar bars
wheel balancing
tracking

Any ideas what it could be?

Thank You

Beyond the obvious (missing wheel weight, tyre damage, buckled wheel) I would say to check that the discs run true. They can be flat, but if there's run-out in the hub, or the wheel bearing's shot, the whole ***embly will run out of true.

I ended up replacing a seemingly good pair of bearing/hub ***emblies on my Subaru for just this problem, the bearings were quiet and appeared fine, but with a 328mm fixed brake disc on them, a small amount of wear translated to enough slack to cause brake judder.

To warp a disc on a road car is very uncommon, the fault usually lies somewhere else, and changing discs and pads would only cure it for 100 miles or so till they'd bed in, then your problem would return.

Other things to check would be control arm bushes, and driveshaft condition.

Cheers Matt, for your reply, as you stated obvious there, wheels were checked, balanced, tracking, new winter tyres.

Bearing wise, bearings were checked at the summer time, and the vibration was the same as before changing the brake pads and discs as it is now.

I would expect very worn control arm bushes to show similar symptoms, but from low speeds, not just high ones.

May be worth swapping wheels front to rear as a simple check.
Years ago I had a van which had a damaged tyre that visually was fine, but would deform at speed due to damage in the plies, and drove perfectly till 55-60mph, where a vibration crept in and became steadily worse with speed.

As you can imagine, I spent a couple of months trying to find the problem, to no avail.

Sorted itself in the end though, I had a blowout on the m25 and put the spare on, and it drove brilliantly from there on.

Do you get vibrations when accelerating hard? or is the vibrations only when doing 60mph
This would point to the drive shafts as the i-ctdi is common for the drive shafts to go.

Have you checked the wheels it self? to see if there are any flat spots?
I had a very minor flat spot on my front drivers alloy wheel on my i-ctdi when i got it - i experienced the vibrations at 60 ish mph.
Was confirmed by moving a known checked good wheel from the rear to the front.
Flat spot wheel was straightened by a alloy wheel refurb company

^ I saw a thread on this forum ages ago, something similar, and IIRC it was related to the rim or the tyre, something along the lines of already described by Matt & Alex

accord_n22 said:

Do you get vibrations when accelerating hard? or is the vibrations only when doing 60mph
This would point to the drive shafts as the i-ctdi is common for the drive shafts to go.

Have you checked the wheels it self? to see if there are any flat spots?
I had a very minor flat spot on my front drivers alloy wheel on my i-ctdi when i got it - i experienced the vibrations at 60 ish mph.
Was confirmed by moving a known checked good wheel from the rear to the front.
Flat spot wheel was straightened by a alloy wheel refurb company

Click to expand...

I havent noticed any vibration as such when accelerating, and it happens when i drive over 60mph and when im braking. Wheels as i've said have been balanced with new tyres put on, wheels look fine without any issues, although i have noticed that it went worse after putting the chunkier winter tyres (i would guess they are damn much heavier as well )

Does it happen all the time when braking, or just when braking at high speed?

doommer93 said:

Wheels as i've said have been balanced with new tyres put on, wheels look fine without any issues

Click to expand...

Wheel balancing only balances the wheel concentrically to the centre of rotation where it was balanced. If the centre of rotation of the wheel on the car is slightly different, or if there is a slight amount of "run-out", the wheel will cause vibration at certain speeds.

Unless you have the eyesight of superman, they may "look fine", but one might be slightly off-centre or have run-out.


edit:
this one was the rims http://typeaccord.co.uk/forum/topic/16220-8th-generation-vibration/
this one was a CV joint http://typeaccord.co.uk/forum/topic/15711-vibration-through-car-55mph-to-70mph/

I can't find the one that turned out to be runout

freddofrog said:

Wheel balancing only balances the wheel concentrically to the centre of rotation where it was balanced. If the centre of rotation of the wheel on the car is slightly different, or if there is a slight amount of "run-out", the wheel will cause vibration at certain speeds.

Unless you have the eyesight of superman, they may "look fine", but one might be slightly off-centre or have run-out.


edit:
this one was the rims http://typeaccord.co.uk/forum/topic/16220-8th-generation-vibration/
this one was a CV joint http://typeaccord.co.uk/forum/topic/15711-vibration-through-car-55mph-to-70mph/

I can't find the one that turned out to be runout

Click to expand...

Vibration also happens when braking which i find odd (and most vibration to the steering wheel is at 40mph) I don't know if rims can cause that. On another hand I've got my summer tyres + wheels ready to be put on after Jan-Feb so thats less things to worry about if its the current wheels.

About the CV joint he says that vibration doesn't come through the steering wheel but comes through the gas pedal. Mine comes through the steering wheel and the gas pedal..

The plan is to get it checked with my local garage (get one of the mechanics to drive it with me and see it ) and if they rule out everything except wheels then i'll change them this weekend.

I'll let you know guys on the outcome

I want to add my story to this topic, maybe others will also benefit from it...

Similar to the OP's problem, I also experienced the annoying judder when braking, mainly from above 50-60 mph. At lower speeds as well, but not so noticeable.
I could also feel it on the steering wheel, and on the brake pedal as well.

Now, the problem was in may case, that the issue appeared immediately after I changed a lot of parts on the car AT THE SAME time, which made it difficult for me to find out what causes the judder.
What was changed prior the problem:
- lower and upper wishbones (Meyle HD)
- stabilizers and lower ball joints (Meyle HD)
- outer tie rods (Lemforder)
- front and rear brake discs and pads (Brembo)
- tracking was done

What I have tried:
Tyres re-balanced, swapped front with back -> issue remains
All suspension and steering parts looked fine: rock solid, no wobble, no play at all, re-tightened the screws etc. -> issue remains
The brake calipers were fine, moving freely, I re-greased all slider bolts, re-cleaned the hub and disc surface, even the wheel from the inside. -> issue remains
Checked the wheel bearing and driveshafts for any play -> nothing
Changed the front discs and pads (Pagid) -> issue remains
Changed the rear discs and pads (Pagid) -> SUCCESS!!! So one of the rear discs was slightly warped. Brake judder gone!

Lessons learnt:
1. Not advised to replace too many things at once. Or even if you do, go for a test drive after each component replaced.
2. Use a brake disc run-out gauge, it is worth the investment. (Also good to measure hub run-out.)
3. Just gently with the brakes in the bedding-in phase

Whilst warping discs isn't that common these days... this normally applies to vented discs and the rears on these cars are solid. Excessive high speed driving and hard braking and then suddenly stopping and parking up can cause heat soak and cause warping.. It's kinda hard to do, but very possible especially if you've ever done a track day. I remember when we took the cars to the Nurburgring, upon finishing a lap, we'd go back out on to the roads and do a few miles at low speeds to help dissipate heat before parking the cars up and going to watch at one of the viewing areas.

Whilst warping of a solid disc is uncommon, I've noticed that by changing a wheel from one side to the other (or front to rear ) often corrects a lot of evils.

The modern replacements are often no match for the normal wheels, there will be a dynamic imbalance one way or the other, though I've never been able to track it down. Check for the 'jwl' marque cast into anything that does replace the standards though..

Sometimes just moving a wheel one or two nuts around the axle can reduce vibration and improve the ride.

doommer93 said:

Vibration also happens when braking which i find odd (and most vibration to the steering wheel is at 40mph) I don't know if rims can cause that. On another hand I've got my summer tyres + wheels ready to be put on after Jan-Feb so thats less things to worry about if its the current wheels.

About the CV joint he says that vibration doesn't come through the steering wheel but comes through the gas pedal. Mine comes through the steering wheel and the gas pedal..

The plan is to get it checked with my local garage (get one of the mechanics to drive it with me and see it ) and if they rule out everything except wheels then i'll change them this weekend.

I'll let you know guys on the outcome

Click to expand...

Did you find out in the end what caused it?