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:

Is there a how-to on doing this? Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

This is a common problem on 5th Gen Preludes. There are ways to fix this, and the problem does have to do with the collars see the link below it'll tell you what to do, I couldn't access yours for some reason...

try this:
http://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1021823

Oh and in regards to the oil question, 5th gens are known to drink a lot of oil. Make sure you constantly monitor the oil level...

 

the common search term on most prelude boards is "shock knock".

 

excellent, thanks for the help