Steering rack, gear or tie rod failure on the 2010 Honda Civic
3 crashes 3 injuries 3 deaths 9 of the 6 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 6 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When steering rack, gear or tie rod failure gets reported
There are 6 reports of steering rack, gear or tie rod failure on the 2010 Honda Civic, 6 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 98,000 miles. It is the 17th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 119,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 3 a crash, 3 an injury and 3 a fatality are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $700–$2,600 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 15 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 400 miles, and latest on the 2010 at 120,000 miles.
By volume the 2022 carries the most reports, with 98; the 2010 has 6. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Bought demo 2010 honda civic ex in december 2010, so it was virtually new. Problem began occurring around the beginning of september 2012, when the mileage of car was approximately 53,000. Upon ignition, the noise coming from the engine was a higher-pitched whir than I was accustomed to. This higher-pitched whir would worsen as I accelerated and as I turned corners. Thought I just needed to allow the car to warm up. That solution did not work. Took the car into the honda dealership where I bought the car. I was told that there was a leak in the power steering rack, and that this leak was draining into my wheel boots, by which I'm guessing he meant steering rack boots. I do not have good knowledge of cars. Was told that somehow the drainage of power steering fluid into my steering boots was creating this high-pitched whir. For the few weeks this noise was occurring before I brought it into the dealership there were no signs of leaks under my car. Was told that until the steering boot was completely saturated with power steering fluid that there would not have been any signs of leakage under the car. Fortunately the honda care…
Brought my honda civic in for routine maintenance on 9/27/14. Was told I had a power steering leak and my entire power steering rack had to be replaced at a cost of $1200.00. I was told the leak is very slow and not an immediate concern but that it will get worse. This seems to be an ongoing problem with this particular make, model and year for the civic. There should be a recall! *tr
Brought my honda civic in for routine maintenance on 9/27/14. Was told I had a power steering leak and my entire power steering rack had to be replaced at a cost of $1200.00. I was told the leak is very slow and not an immediate concern but that it will get worse. This seems to be an ongoing problem with this particular make, model and year for the civic. There should be a recall! *tr
Also reported on the 2010 Honda Civic
Other brake problem
Other visibility problem
Airbag inflator rupture
Other body or interior problem
Other engine problem
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 6 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does steering rack, gear or tie rod failure happen on the 2010 Honda Civic?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 120,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is steering rack, gear or tie rod failure on the 2010 Honda Civic?
6 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed