Is it possible to take the front rotors off of an Accord on your own?

 

yes it is. You will need an impact driver though. that's needed to remove the two retaining screws that hold on the rotors. don't even try to take the rotors off without one because you will most likely end up stripping those screws

 

i've been told the rotors are 'pressed' on, what does that mean?

 

accords are a pain in the *** to take off the front rotors. You have to take the axle out and take the rotor out from the back kind of. It's not like a civic or integra with two screws on the front and the rotor just falls off.

 

i've already warped my stock rotors. Hawk HPS+ will do that after a few autoxs and a open track events

 

As much as I love Honda, and truly appreciate their foresight into making life easy to work on a car: ACCORD BRAKES ARE THE WORST DESIGN I HAVE SEEN YET!!!!!!

My 96' Accord has been on jackstands since Saturday trying to replace the rotors. I'll tell you how they're supposed to come off along with how mine did come off. You can be the judge as to what you should do:

1. The rotor is bolted to the BACK side of the spindle flange(the part with the lug studs poking out of it). Why? I don't know. Perhaps someone could enlighten me.
2. So, you need to remove first of all remove the driveshaft/axle nut. This is best done with the tire on the ground as it is torqued down pretty tight(remove the hubcap or wheel center plug).
3. Remove the caliper and bracket that holds the pads/caliper.
4. Unbolt the hanger that attaches the brake line to the steering knuckle. This allows you to move stuff were you want to without tugging on the line.
5. Remove the lower ball joint and steering tie rod ball joint. Now, due to 4 years of New England road salt, the lower ball joint didn't pop as easily as it should. On my Integra, the puller managed to collapse the stud because it was in so tight, and this one began to do the same. At this point, I just left the lower control arm attached to the knuckle and unbolted the control arm from the car.
6. Use a puller or soft head hammer to remove the drive shaft from the spindle.
7. On the back side of the steering knuckle, there are four bolts that hold the bearing carrier to the steering knuckle. Remove them. Now, even with absolute care, using penetrating oil and a torch, only two of these bolts came out in one piece on mine.
8. Now for the fun part. The bearing holder/spindle/rotor assembly is lightly pressed into the steering knuckle and needs to be removed. If you buy some extra 10mm x125 bolts, you can screw them into the four holes on the back side of the steering knuckle and hit them with a hammer. Did this work for me? No. I had to remove the whole steering knuckle and resort to a hydraulic press. Of course there is no easy way to fixture this mess on a press, so I had to fabricate a jig along with turning down some custom punches to fit the bearing carrier. As my 2" bar stock jig started to bend, I had to resort to trying to press the spindle from the bearing and leave the bearing in the knuckle. The bearing then popped at ~1500 lbs., leaving one of the bearing races siezed to the spindle. With the spindle out of the way, I could then fixture the knuckle and work on removing the bearings that I just ruined. They finally started to break away at ~2300lbs. I then tried to remove the rest of the bearing from the spindles so that I could salvage them(the spindles). Heating them with an acetylene torch didn't touch them. Tried cutting through the race with the torch, but with softer metal beneath it required more skill than I possess. So I had to resort to using a die grinder for the other spindle and purchase one new spindle, along with two sets of bearings.

That's where I stand now. I'm waiting for the new parts to come in. Now, mine was worst case since everything was very rusted together. You can try to remove yours, but if you have enough thickness left to your rotors, you're better off just taking the car to a shop with an on car brake lathe to fix the warped rotor problem.

Good luck. Here is a link to an exploded view of the brake assembly. You can also order parts from here at near wholesale:

http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com/...ernext1=315535


#2 is the bearing carrier that is pressed/bolted to the steering knuckle
#22 are the four bolts that need to be removed from the rear of the knuckle
#3 is the spindle

PS I hate Honda Accord brakes. Did I mention that?

 

figures as much

 

Holy cow!! You gotta do all that just to remove a rotor?? Spindle, ball joints, drive shaft, tie rod, LCAs, etc. etc. WTF! I 'd pay someone to do it, screw that! Oh and remind me not to buy an Accord..

 

As painful as this has been, paying someone $80/hr to do it for me would have been more painful. The going rate around here was 5hrs. MINIMUM for replacing rotors. That and most garages around here charge >20% over list price for parts. So I was looking at $700 for a break job.