After replacing most of the front suspension on my '94 Accord, I took it in for front tires, and an alignment. After the alignment, the steering stinks. It wanders all about, ruts or uneven road case no end to trouble, the slightest steering input seems to cause it to veer to one side or the other. I don't remember it being THIS bad before I did the work on the front end which makes me wonder if perhaps I've screwed it up.

The readout from the alignment shows Front Left Caster of NEGATIVE 2.7, and Front Right Caster of NEGATIVE 2.6. These should be at least POSITIVE 2.0, so my Caster is off by nearly 5 degrees on each side. I'm assuming that much negative Caster could be the cause of my steering issues.

Negative Caster is the lower control arm being too far towards the back of the car, right?

I replaced the Radius Rod bushings on both sides. If I mixed up the A and B bushings, and put them in the wrong place (the larger one to the back instead of to the front) would that be enough to throw the Caster off so much? If not, then am I likely looking at frame damage from an accident (I'm reasonably sure that it was in a front end accident at some point in it's past, as I can clearly see some damage to the bottom of the radiator core support).

Finally, the Camber on the Right Rear is also off according to the print out. Left rear is at -0.4, but right rear is at -1.0 (should be -0.9 to +0.1). Is that worth worrying about, and if so, what might be the cause?

Yes, if the lower ball joint is behind the upper when viewed from above you have negative caster, it'll act much like a shopping cart wheel.

If you did mix the bushings, depending on how much different the thickness is, yes you can throw the caster out that much.

What's the ride height at the right rear vs left? It could just have some sag on that side. You can get aftermarket camber correctors for the rear, I think. I haven't looked into that stuff for a gen 5. Where was the fuel level when the alignment was checked?

I haven't looked at ride height, though I'll check that. Now that you mention it, I changed the rear struts a few weeks back, and when I did the right rear, it was missing the dust boot, and the dust cover plate. I wonder if that might make just a bit of difference in the ride height on that corner.

Fuel level was probably just a bit below half a tank.

I guess I'll tear the radius rods out and check the bushings. The more I think about it, they came apart nicely, but when I put them back together, I had a time of getting the bolts back into the lower control arm, and had to shift the arms back a bit to get things lined up. I'm nearly certain that I've screwed up the bushings. I always say, when something goes wrong look at the last thing you messed with.

The fuel level was good for doing the alignment. I don't recall if the rear droops on a full tank on the older Accords as much as it does with the gen 7s.

If the plate for the dust boot is in there in such a way as to cause the suspension on that side to compress a little more, even by a half inch, that can cause the camber to go negative. I've noticed that Honda seems to have put a very steep camber curve into all of their rear suspensions.

The plate isn't in there at all on the right side. There is a bit of play in the strut, can hear it bumping up and down on the upper mount as a result. I have the dust boot, and the plate, but between the constant rain, and the other work that needed to be done, I haven't had a chance to tear the strut back out and put the missing parts in. That might explain the camber on the right rear, and I'm hoping that I mixed those bushings up, and that will account for the caster problem in the front.

Ok, a quick update here. I believe that I've got the problem solved. The Radius Rod bushings were in the right way, so I looked at the other work I had done on the front end, to see if any of that could have screwed up the Caster. The most obvious option was the upper control arms.

When I did the job, I knew that the arms had been messed with previously, as they were both missing the cotter pins, one actually had a regular hardware store nut on it, instead of the castle nut. The new arms (which I purchased aftermarked from a parts store) weren't labeled right and left, so I just matched them up to the arms that were already on the car. I did some digging around on Google Images, and found a picture of an Accord front suspension, as well as quite a few pictures of front arms for sale on Ebay, and a drawing in the Honda Accord shop manual. They all showed the Upper Ball Joint being off center on the arm, towards the BACK of the car, however mine were towards the front. I figured that at some point in the past, someone changed the arms, probably swapping on a set of junk yard arms (there was one in the trunk, pretty beat up, and from a different car, and the ones on the car were pretty ratty, and the ball joints were a mess), and got them on the wrong sides. When I swapped on the new arms, I didn't know any different, and just followed what was already there, putting my new arms on the wrong sides as well.

I swapped the arms around, and put it all back together this morning. A quick test ride was all the proof that I needed. It handles like it's on rails now. I imagine that I've messed the toe up a bit moving the suspension so much, and will probably need to have it aligned again, but the horrible handling is gone, and I can drive at 55 without white knuckling the steering wheel now.

Fredsvt, thank you for the time and help you gave. A little reassurance that I was looking in the right direction went a long way toward helping me figure out what was wrong!