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front control arm ES bushing hell on a base model
Energy Suspension pissed me off, and my luck sux. (long rant, scroll down for fix)
In my main car, the Prelude I’ve been having a problem with alignment and noise from the front suspension after some hard driving. Because of this I decided to upgrade all bushings to Polyurethane, install new wheel bearings, and hope that I could find the source of the noise.
I started with the rear, and as I figured it was fairly easy, just very tedious removing each bushing with the press. The best part was the wheel bearing came as an assembled hub, so I just had to slide it on and throw on the spindle nut.
The front is where all hell broke loose.
First thing wrong, I removed the knuckle/hub assembly so I could press out the old bearing and press in the new one. WRONG! My damn press is too small. The hub won’t fit. So I had to take it to a shop with a large press to do the swap.
Then as I was taking the upper and lower control arms off, I found that the right upper ball joint was really bad (found the source of the noise). Here is the kicker, that ball joint is part of my camber correction kit that I had to install because my car was lowered so much. You can’t replace just the $30 ball joint. So I bent over and had to buy another $100 camber kit! Mother ****er!! Wait it gets worse!
Now I have my knuckle/hub assembly with the new bearings and my new ball joint. Time to start working on the control arm bushings. I open the ES bushing kit, and the instructions included was for a dodge neon! WTF?! Anyway I figured it’s the same procedure as the rear. Press out old, push in new.
I start with the upper control arm, press out the old, and the new ones are too ****ing small! At this point I’m getting a little mad. So I figure that they labeled the kit incorrectly. I call ES the next morning. All parts are correct for the 98 prelude, and then he tells me that I should not have pressed out the upper bushings, but burnt out the rubber and used the shell. Again, the correct instructions would have been a great help for that part. Instead I now know how to replace the motor mounts on a neon. Anyway, he emails me the instructions and I go back outside to repress the old bushings in.
Ok, so now the upper control arm is taken care of. Time to start the lower. I press out the old and when I go to install the new ones they are too ****ing big! That’s when I see it “C.A.B. KIT FOR 98 Prelude SH� and for those that don’t know, the SH has different control arms!
So back on the phone with ES… “when you said base model you didn’t mean SH?� Oh if I could reach through a phone to choke someone, I tell ya.. Anyway, they don’t sell a front control arm bushing kit for my car. At this point I’m thinking, great, my car isn’t anywhere near drivable condition. This is about as ****ed as I can be. I called Honda before asking about OEM rubber…. $230 just for the lower CAB. lol right!
So I ask some people on the PO (thanks again 71dsp). It turns out the 96 prelude had the same lower bushings as my car. Woohoo my luck is starting to change.
I ordered the 96 kit and had them send it next day. I was thinking that once I got the kit I would use the lower bushings, throw the uppers in the type SH box and send it in for a refund. Again WRONG! ****ing upper bushings are different. Well at least I now have the correct lower bushings and the SH uppers fit.
So to sum it up, for a fifth gen base model prelude, if you want to replace the front CABs using ES parts, you need to order the front bushing kit for the 5th gen SH (its not labeled SH or base) and a 4th gen. Then throw all the extras away.
Now why don’t they just throw the correct bushings in a box and label it “98 base Prelude CAB� they obviously make the correct bushings. My only answer is just because they are too dumb to figure it out.
/rant ok glad I got that off my chest.
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"If I had all the money I ever spent on cars........I'd spend it all on cars"
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