I just finished installing a clutch and flywheel into a 97 Honda Civic. As far as I can tell everything went togather smoothly, but now when I drive it, it “wobbles” - like a heavy slow vibration. It gets gets really bad when I accelerate (gets worse and worse until I even out my speed, then it calms down), although when I hit the clutch pedal it disappears. I can still feel it while I am cruising at speed, but it’s hardly noticable compared to while accelerating. Under 40mph I can’t hardly tell it’s there - over 40 it gets slightly worth with speed. But when I am accelerating hard its bad enough to bounce things around in my car. I cannot reproduce it by reving the engine with the clutch pedal in, or with the transmission in neutral. Any ideas. I have taken the tranny off twice trying to find this. I am a little desperate for a solution. Thanks for any input
My first inclination was an out of balance flywheel/clutch assembly but since it is fine in neutral that’s out.
My guess would be a collapsed motor/transmission mount, something loose in the suspension (tie rod end, ball joint pinch bolt, etc.), or possibly an axle shaft binding in either the inner or outer joint.
The first two should be fairly obvious but a binding CV joint may not be. Sometimes the only way to tell is by removal of the shaft and rotating the joint around by hand. The joint can be tight, not making any noise, etc. but may have a bind that can be felt with the bare hands.
(The last one I ran into like this was on one of my daughter’s cars about 4 or 5 months ago. The symptoms on her car were exactly as you describe on yours. Joints tight, no noise at all, and almost unsafe to drive due to severity of the wobble.)
Do a visual inspection of the drive axles in motion: Raise the front wheels off the ground; place jack stands and ramps under the body for support; set the rear brakes, and put blocks behind the rear wheels. Lay in front of the car as your driver puts it into gear with the engine running, and you observe the action of drive axles. An irregular motion of an axle would show you where to look more closely.
bicyclekick01: ok4450 is right. Smells like axles. First thing: RELAX- you’re gonna find culprit. I would first merely EYEBALL anything and everything related to the job- take your good old time, go slow and get nosey, you wouldn’t believe how often you find culprit right off the bat this way. Eyeball if trans is smack up against engine all the way around. Jack up car and make sure axles are properly pushed all the way
into the trans. Now you might run car in gear up in the air and observe axles at various speeds for wobble/runout. BE SAFE! Now grab inner half of inner cv joint and axle itself and ck for excessive play between the two. (Compare one side to the other.) Also now you can see if mabye you seperated the two halves of the inner cv joint(s) when you pulled the axle(s) out- even though the boot(s) could still be intact,
etc. No offense, most of us have done something like this. Now go over all the fasteners you encountered, shouldn,t be that hard to recheck. Motor/trans mounts: if trans/engine isn’t sitting pretty much like it had been, the rubber insulaters could be squshed over to where they’re not insulating engine vibrations. Don’t forget about axle nuts. At this point you might have to bite the bullet and pull the axles out
and check for binding/joint seperation per ok4450. Chill! If you get worked up in a rush you’ll miss something right in front of you! Good luck- KS
It’s at least nice to know that the general consensus is that it’s something not buried in the tranny :-). I will follow these suggestions and see what I find. Thanks for the advice!