I recently purchased a 99 prelude which seemed to be in excellent condition. A couple of days after buying it I noticed clunking sounds coming from the passenger rear, like a back shock or something loose in the suspension. Took it to honda, they replaced the "collars" as the guy referred to them. Ok that was $200. Car still made noise, honda wanted $600 to replace the entire control arm on that side, $439 to replace the shock on that side.
Right away I told them to stop everything, I was coming get the car, and did. I have been working alot lately and havent had the time to work on the car myself, so I let a local shop look it over. Explained everything, they replaced both rear shocks and said something about cutting the collars or spacers shorter so they would fit tighter. Either way, that was $459, car still makes noise.
In an effort to save face and stop wasting my money on something I know I should have done to begin with, I started to google and came across this forum. I searched the forum and found only one post relating to my problem. It was an old post from 2003 and the link found in the post is bad. Seems to refer to replacing these collars:
MSA, Thanks for your replies and info.
I recent found this on Temple of Vtec's.
http://www.sonic.net/~danm/shock/
I think I will try this first since it is alot cheaper than purchasing the entire strut assemblies. If the noise remains, then I shall replace the struts completely.
Again, thanks for your help.
Take care. By the way, does your Prelude drink a little bit of oil? I think mine does a little. Let me monitor that more closely.
Is there a how-to on doing this? Any help is greatly appreciated.