accord 90 - brake symptoms were cv joint/control arm related

Posting this for the record. Accord 1990, 260,000km.

As in Tegger's faq, http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/lowerballjoint/index.html,
my brake problem turned out to be a lower ball joint problem.

The wheel would shake when braking at high speeds and sometimes the
car would pull a little bit to the right. Front rotors/pads were oem,
about a year old. The wheel would also turn a few degrees when going
over potholes.

After a while I started noticing a knocking when making right turns,
so I took my car to get the cv joint replaced. I ended up replacing
right lower ball joint, upper control arm and drive shaft. Next thing
I know, the brake problem is gone.

vlad

 

the brake problem is unrelated to the cv joint or ball joint problems.
the brake symptoms you describe are usually fixed by re-torquing the
wheel properly, and removal of the wheel to do the other work, then
re-fitting it achieved precisely that.

 

Thanks Jim, it know makes sense. In fact this time around I had it at
a different shop.
The one I usually went to seemed to always use an impact wrench (hope
that's correct) to remove/put wheels on.

vlad

 

that was 100% of your braking problem. stick with the new shop by the
sound of it.

 

Sort of a for-anyone's-reference comment: If this shop does
a lot of wheel-related work, then it is possible they use
"torque sticks" on the business end of their impact
wrenches. These get the right torque, or near to it. Even
torque wrenches are not too reliable in getting the "exact"
torque. First because they do lose calibration; second
because the purpose of measuring torque is to set the bolt
tension, and correlating the two is pretty inexact.

 

if used. i've never seen a wheel shop use them.

depends on the type of wrench. the common tilt block type do indeed
need regular calibration. the split beam type are much more robust.
bending beam don't need it at all.

kinda sorta. in the op's instance, the problem is *inconsistency* of
bolt torque. even if a torque wrench is out of calibration, it's
usually /consistently/ out, and thus whatever torque results is the same
for all the bolts.

 

I saw them when I bought a new set of tires last year and
queried the manager about torquing them to spec. He sounded
a little insulted and fetched me a box of the torque sticks
to show me what his people were using.

If one does not drop the BB, I expect so.

It's pretty inexact.

The problem may be as you propose. One cannot say without
more info.