93 prelude 2.2 s.(evo killer, haha not) anyways I got some quotes from a shop and one thing he mentioned was the control arms need replacement because the ball joints are what he called "warped". Anyways idk what warped ball joint looks like, but i have heard of checking them for play(still need to do that too). The estimate was for about 3 or 4 thousand total. That seems a bit much. Iv had the car for 4 month max and since day one my back right has squeeked and just today my front left squeeks when I go over or press down on the fender. The back R is a heavier/deeper sounding squeek. Also when I turn the wheel my axel crunches a tad lol, iv looked at the boots and they are ripped and greassed POS's, guess those gotta go. And to make matters worse I have a crank seal leak and my t belts apparently loose, dude wants $909 and won't take customer parts or else id get em from one of the oem sites. Can anyone prioritize the problems for me? Which to worry about first, the t belt or the annoying squeeks? which parts of the suspension would be the cheapest needed repair? Idon't have alot of money so id like to maybe focus on one end of the car at a time when dealing with suspention. Both will leave me stranded so what should I do

 

Seen a video on finding suspension noise and I pretty much got an idea of what to look for. But i still would like to know if this shops raping me on the prices iv listed above.

 

dont pay 3k for control arm replacement, thats just rediculous, a 30 minute D.I.Y (well, on a 5th gen. but cant be much different)

Hopefully thats 3-4 K for EVERTHING thats wrong, and thats still steep, Just read up on things, buy a few tool sets and go to work. Then get it aligned afterwards, save some dough

(3-4K could just buy a new Lude without those problems, lol)

 

3-4k sounds extremely way to much for everything you talked about still. if your not comfortable doing everything else on your own i would take it to a couple other places and see what they say. IMO id get the timing belt taken care of before anything else. if that breaks or jumps timing your problems could double.

 

The upper control arms (front and rear) have ball joints. The lower ball joints (front and rear) are in the knuckle not the lower arm. Which ones are bad? I would take it to another shop for a second and even a third opinion. That's WAY TOO MUCH. If your rear main seal was leaking your clutch would be slipping from being oil soaked. If you clutch doesn't slip then it probably is not leaking. It most likely is the cam seal or distributor o-ring up top dripping down making it look like the rear main.

 

its an automatic sadly. I still haven't really looked too see which are defective. Is oem necessary for the ball joints and control arms?

 

The lower ball joints can be purchased by themselves, for upper ball joints you have to buy an upper control arm. OEM is not necessary, but you can get decent priceson OEM parts here
http://www.hondapartsnow.com