I'm going to replace the bearings just for the hell of it, NAPA has them for $22 each, so I might as well. I'm going to do the rears tonight. According to the manual, it's just held on by the retainer screws and caliper, so the rear discs should be easy to do. Why couldn't Honda just do the front brakes like everyone else...

 

The rear is easy, like you said. Beginning in 1998 Honda did just that for the front.

 

Just what? Make it easy? I sware, I've never seen this kind of setup before. I've worked on Toyotas, Scions, Subarus, Fords...and I've never once seen a car that requires you to remove half of the front end to change the brakes.

I just hope that once the new rotors, pads and bearings are in, no more problems arise. The car runs perfectly, with the new tires on it rides very smooth (compared to my Scion), it doesn't pull/drift, theres no noises... I just hope this isn't a sign for things to come. I set a budget of $1500 for this car (for repairs and replacement parts) and I'm already at the $1000 mark.

 

I meant beginning in 1998 Honda made their front brakes just like everyone else's with the rotor outside of the hub.

 

Gotcha. It figures that the one thing I need to replace on the car is the one difficult thing to do.

Oh well, other than the brakes, I love this car.

 

I gave up on the brakes. Half of the front wheel bearing was fused with the hub, the rear calipers were completely seized up, bolt heads were snapping off...I ended up getting quoted $550 for the whole job at R&S Strauss, then they called to tell me the calipers were beyond f'd so that bumped the price up to $829. I didn't want to spend that much for brakes, but it HAD to be done and now that it's done, I'm more than happy. Atleast now that all of the brakes are brand new, I won't have to ever worry about them again during the cars lifespan.

 

You can purchase the hub and bearing as a unit for reasonable price, or take your hubs to a machine shop and have shop press out old bearings and install new.

As pointed out, some folks disassemble and reassemble the bearing, but you run a small risk of contaminating the bearing and having failure later.

I found it was easier to remove knuckle and separate hub from knuckle. This requires separating three ball joints. I used two longer bolts threaded into hub to substitute for the hub/knuckle retaining bolts and drove the hub from the knuckle w/ firm raps on the bolt heads.

There is no easy way to do this job.

good luck