katinhat

2001 Accord EX, MT, 265k miles.

Couple weekends ago replaced ball joints, upper control arm, wheel bearings, strut assemblies, inner/outer tie rods, sway bar links, rotors and axles.

Had put on Cardone Selects, after reading their site and watching their videos. After everything was done however, the car shuddered at 2k-3k rpms, either accelerating or under load (like on a hill). On "brand new” axles, not reman's.

I broke down and ordered Raxles (didn’t want to spend so much on the car), installed them this weekend. Immediate fix. ZERO vibration or shuddering, all the symptoms are GONE. Worth every penny, even though expensive. Returned the Cardone’s to Rockauto.

Here are some things I learned that might help other rookies like myself, I had never done anything like this before:

1. BEST RESOURCE: While forums and Google were a ton of help, also get the Honda Service Manual, print off the pages you need and have them with you during the job. Read the section you need ahead of time, multiple times, and have with you in the garage and just go step by step. Someone posted it free online for Gen 6, if one were so inclined to get it that way.  Otherwise it’s pretty expensive, but it’s 1,695 pages of gold, Honda engineers are no dummies and you have their “official” instructions, fluid types etc. I actually torqued every bolt/nut to the specified setting.

2. BEST TOOL: Go to Harbor Freight and buy the $20 ball joint separator tool (the “Special Tool” the Honda manual says to use). Will save you tons of blood/sweat/tears breaking ball joints loose, take it from me. Didn’t use it on first job when replacing everything that I did, but bought it for the Raxles install (because didn’t want to tear up my new ball joint boot). Should have bought it the first time, I felt like an idiot for not doing so. All other tools I borrowed from Autozone including axle nut socket (they didn’t have the ball joint separator tool, just had the fork).

3. C-CLIP: When sliding in the new axles, turn the axle (or c-clip) so that the c-clip is hanging down with the open part of the clip toward the ground. It is designed to be larger diameter than the axle shaft, but then it hangs down and catches when you try sliding the axle in. It will go in so far and stick before fully in. So turn the gap toward the ground, and less of it catches, if you can picture that. I did not have to bang on it or slam it with the hub, any of those tricks. Just be patient.

4. SAFETY: I did one side at a time while the other side had the wheel/tire still on the car and resting on the ground. Then had both jack stand and jack on the side I was working on. This way I felt that I did not have to worry so much about shoving in the new axle and knocking the car off the stands and on to me. I admitted that I am a rookie, so if a professional out there has a better typical-garage set up than what I did, PLEASE speak up and advise. Jack stands are not designed to prevent a whole lot of sideways movement, just vertical support.

5. FORK REMOVAL: When you are removing the damper fork (so you can get your axles on/off) I took a rubber mallet and tapped the fork down off the damper (shock) after removing the 2 bolts. Then to remove it, because it is sort of pinned between the axle you are about to remove and the damper, I took my jack handle and pried the suspension/wheel hub downward till I had enough room to cajole it out. Just be patient and try different angles, but it does come out easily once you find the right angle.

6. FORK INSTALL: When reinstalling the damper fork, might have to pry again to get it over the axle, then I took the rubber mallet and tapped upward on it (tapping upward on the bottom of the fork) to move it back on to the damper. Yours might slide on easily, mine needed a little tapping. This gets your damper fork holes mostly aligned with the holes in the lower control arm for you to reinstall the lower bolt. I had jack handle tucked under one arm while pushing back on damper fork and holding bolt with other hand, then once I had it barely in, tapped the bolt all the way in with mallet. Important: I loosely installed the damper fork bolts (lower and upper), and then put full weight of car on the suspension before snugging it up. One way is to move your jack (car is resting only on jack stand at this point while you are moving it) on the lower control arm right under the knuckle, carefully on the small flat spot by your lower ball joint nut, and jack it up until the car barely moves up off the jack stand. Whether it was unsafe or not, this made me nervous so I worked quickly at that point, a little paranoid my jack was going to slide up the lower control arm and the car would bounce down on the jack stand again. So I only jacked until the stand was barely loose to minimize the drop if it did occur, then cranked down the damper fork bolts without screwing around. Then carefully lowered jack to rest car on jack stand again, and then repositioned jack to jack point to get back to my two points of support. But if you don’t have the weight of the car on the suspension, the damper may not be seated in the fork when you tighten the top bolt. Also, Honda says to have weight before tightening either fork bolt.

7. Alternative to previous point: When I did the Raxles, I just put the entire car back together, lowered it to the ground with the wheel on, and then slid under the car and reached up and tightened them down. Harder to reach, but it was really no big deal. IF you are going to do this, MAKE SURE you don’t forget about doing it, because you’ll be polishing off other steps like tightening and denting your axle nut, etc and may forget about getting up in there to tighten the damper fork bolts. I almost forgot the driver side. Why having the Service Manual is handy, not moving forward till you check off each step. I propped one ratchet on one end of lower bolt where the floor kept it from rotating, and tightened nut on other side.

Overall, I just took my time, relied on folks in this forum and my manual, and the whole project went fairly well. Set screws on rotor were a pain, DO NOT worry about trying to remove them, if they don’t’ come out just freaking drill them out and don’t put in new ones. They are only there to keep it pinned from station A to station B on the assembly line. I also paid a shop to press the wheel bearings out and in, and while they had the knuckle I had them do the ball joints too. No brainer for the hassle it would have been. It’s not as easy as it looks on the ETCG video of him doing a bearing replacement. Swaybar links were the hardest because you have to cut off the old ones (unless incredibly lucky with the whole allen wrench thing), I'm not sure it was worth it, to be honest. I just did it because I was tearing it all apart and so had good access and they were cheap.

Anyway, wanted to share some things I would have liked to have known heading into it, albeit I got amazing help from this forum. Thanks all.

masospaghetti

100% agree about the Raxles. Had the same shuddering problem after literally a dozen reman or new cheap axles. Even the recommended Cardone Select axles still shuddered. The raxles ARE worth the price.

Good tips also for changing them out.

djkurious

+1 on the Raxles. Went through 5 pairs before Raxle...