I have a 07 civic si sedan that has rapid inner tire wear on the R/R. I have been told that
rear control arms are not adjustable by a private shop. The dealership says they are adjustable. I took a look, and I say there not. Is anybody else having this problem.

 

You can add my wife's 07 Civic Hybrid to the list. She was experiencing a vibration so took the car in last August. They told her the rear upper control arms, on both sides, needed to be replaced. Seemed strange that _both_ sides would experience the same problem, and I commented on such at the time. They replaced these for free, but told us that the tires had wear on the inner edge due to an alignment problem.

I questioned that the tire problem wouldn't be related to the control arms, but ultimately decided not to battle over the ~$200 for replacement tires.

Then this weekend, I took her car for a state inspection, and found that the rear tires were so badly worn at the edges they needed to be replaced to pass inspection. (These were the front tires, having been rotated to the back last August -- I don't make a regular habit of rotating, since it has some performance downsides, and unless you get it for free, you typically end spending more for rotation than you save in tire life.)

The car is recently out of warranty, since she puts ~20K miles per year on it, but I kept the worn tires to show the dealer. Called and told them we needed to bring it in because of this issue, and that though it was out of warranty, it was clearly an issue that occurred under warranty. They said the manager would need to see it. So that will be later this week. Came home and did a quick google search, and I now I see this is a well-known problem.

Good to know, because it's certainly firepower going in -- but my guess is there's a secret warranty, and it won't be that big a battle to get satisfaction in terms of already incurred costs.

The real question, though, is what about going forward. Burning through a set of rear tires every year/20K miles is not an acceptable state of affairs.

 

When I took my '07 Civic Hybrid to my dealer in May for an oil change,
they told me all four tires needed to be replaced due to worn out
treads. The car only had 18500 miles on it at the time, so I was
flabbergasted. The service advisor suggested I was driving the car
too aggressively.

While researching replacement tires online, I discovered that this
premature tire wear had happened to many other Civic owners. In fact,
Honda had issued a service bulletin (008-001) for this back in early
'08. There is a problem with the rear control arms which can cause
uneven or premature tire wear in all 2006-2007 Civics, except for the
Si. So I went back to the dealer, showed the advisor the service
bulletin, and got the control arms fixed.

Now why didn't they just fix the control arms in the first place
instead of questioning the customer's driving habits? Seems to me
either the advisor is incompetent or dishonest. I suspect it's the
latter as she mentioned that Honda doesn't pay the dealer much to
cover the repair. Others on the internet have had the same experience
over this issue. Looks like Honda stumbled on this one.

 

We had the same problem and a similar experience. For some reason the Dealers will not acknowledge the problem and their first response was a lame excuse. We didn't align enough. Bull Manure.

If you need action and compensation going to Honda Corporate is the only way. They will send a check. Squeaky wheel solution.

We got new control arms from the dealer but had to pay half and reimbursement for the two sets of tires we burned through from corporate.

 

I must repeat, the new rear upper control arms for the 06,07,08 and 09 are just a pacifier, the excessive rear tire wear is because the rear wheels increase camber AND toe in more when you put weight on the rear suspension. And no, the stock rear camber arms are not adjustable. Simply put, the more weight you carry on the rear suspension the faster your rear tires will wear.

 

We have a 2007 Civic we bought in Aug 2007. We recently took it in for really bad road noise and vibration at 29000 miles. They said our tires were unevenly worn and needed to be replaced AND we needed new breaks. They "generously" replaced the control arms under warranty, but would not pay for the tires. We recently learned about the service bulletin which suggests Honda and the dealers knew about this problem in Jan 2008. If they would have let us know then about the control arm problem, we wouldn't have had to buy new tires (assuming the new control arms fix the problem). This was our first and LAST Honda. We've never had to dish out $700 for tires and brakes on any other car less than 2 years old with only 29K miles. I called Honda today and got nowhere with them. All they would do is lodge my complaint.
Shame on Honda!

 

dmmeye,

we share your frustrations. know that this has not been my experience with honda in the 12 yrs I've owned my 98 civic. it just seems like someone in engineering just had a brain cramp and screwed up the design on the rear suspension. it is definitely a shame on them type situation. but please do not judge honda based on this one experience. they probably have more than a billion satisfied customers. the biggest problem with this situation is that our federal laws only require automakers to recall safety related issues only which this does not quite qualify. my windstar has a similar design flaw but for will never do a recall since it is not a safety related issue.

however i'd call american honda (talk to a supervisor) and lodge a complaint saying that you should have received at least a warranty claim on the tires. you should also suggest to them to go minimally half way with you on the cost if not a 75% Honda /25% you deal since this is clearly a design flaw.

 

honda is slowly becoming the new GM and Ford; they are relying on their reputation now to sell cars. This is much like how ford and GM were in their heyday they built quality cars that everyone liked and could afford, they became complacent and began to cut corners to increase their profit margin, now they have a terrible reputation for build quality. honda is headed this way as well unless they shape up soon they will fall like the others and get an awesome acronym like Found On Road Dead or Fix Or Repair Daily.

 

You can file a complaint with the NHTSA at:

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/ivoq/

This is not just a tire wear issue as I have read about cases where a tire blew out or a control arm snapped in half, causing a crash. The more complaints the NHTSA gets on this problem, the more they will consider forcing a recall.

 

I have had some success on our 07 Civic EX with replacing the 08-001 fixed rear camber control arm with a 3rd party "adjustable" upper camber arm. Then I set the rear camber at 0 (Zero) Degrees and the rear "toe in" set to 0 (Zero) Degrees AT NO REAR SUSPENSION LOAD. Now when we get in the car our weight on the rear suspension toes the rear wheels to "inside edge of toe-in spec" at 0.10 Degrees. When we load the car down I am assuming we are some where up to the "outer end of spec" at 0.025 Degrees because we have stopped wearing out tires, BUT not until I took it upon myself to address the issue. In the end, it may be a procedural problem from erroneous alignment instructions provided by Honda to the mechanics, just a hunch. If you decide to try this method you will find the rear toe-in adjustment to be at the outer edge of its adjustment range for Zero Toe-in when the camber is at Zero degrees.