I've always loved my 96 Accord and ever since the motor went in it I've always wanted to fix it or buy another one. It's probably one of my favorite cars ever made. Well, I bought one with a strong motor, but the body is a little rough. I planned to just drive it as a beater to/from work, around town etc. This way I could stop putting soo many miles on my TL. My goal is to put as little money as possible into this thing. Well, not long after getting it the differential bearings started making noise. It's a pretty loud growl. You can also feel the play where the axle goes into the transmission.

I looked around and found a few transmissions at a junk yard for a reasonable price, but I'm really dreading the labor of putting it in. Either I pay a shop an outrageous price or I tackle it myself. Neither do I really want to do. So I'm considering just driving it until it dies? Any harm in this? My only fear is that I've seen rear ends lock up on trucks when the bearings failed. Is this a concern on these? I don't want the front wheels locking up while I'm going down the highway. I'm basically just wondering if it's something I need to fix immediately, or if it's something I should just keep driving until it dies since I'll be replacing the transmission anyway. If the car lasts another 3-4 months, I'll be ecstatic with it and feel like I got my moneys worth. Anything past that would just be a bonus.

 

If you know how to pull a tranny all you gotta do is lift out the differential after opening up the case and you can have a shop press off the old and press on the new. You can even use a torch to heat up the bearings and they will lift right off(you just make about 20 circular passes). You can freeze the differential before slapping on the bearings and they will slide right on. You can do the same to both of the input shaft bearings while you're at it.

 

I'm not sure I know how to pull the transmission, but I'm going to learn. From what I've read it doesn't look too difficult on this car. Any tips?

I was under the impression that you had to completely disassemble the transmission to get to the differential bearings. Is this not true?