First post for me, so be gentle!

I've slowly been restoring my 94 LX with unknown mileage. The current speedo shows now a little over 99K miles, but I know it's not the original, so no telling...

I've done LOT's of things to this car and enjoy driving it quite a bit. I orginally bought it for my youngest son, but he got mad at it when the front right wheel bearing went bad and I wound up helping him buy a newer 07 Accord 4 dr/4 cyl./5 sp, which he loves dearly.

I'm looking to replace the sway bar bushings and end bushings and have both a Hayes manual and the factory manual, but neither shows how much to tighten the sway bar end bushing assembly, at least that I can find.

While I don't race the car or anything, I do appreciate handling and have been an autocrosser at points in my life. I think the current bushings are contributing to some noise and squeaking in the front and I've put about 40K miles on the car since I bought if for my son and the bushings weren't new then.

My question is whether or not you think there is any down side to using the harder polyurethane bushings, and how to lubricate the new bushings when replacing them. The shop manual shows silicon grease being applied to the bar end link bushings and the bar bushing that bolt to the bottom of the car. It would seem grease in these areas would attract grit and cause more wear and noise. Is there a technique to lubricate these without causing problems down the road?

The other question regards the brakes. I've put new rotors on the front, new drums on the rear and like stated earlier, I had to replace the front right wheel bearing. I was appalled at the hub over rotor design of this 5th gen Accord, but I know you are all familiar with that problem. The new wheel bearing on the right front is less than a year old and the shop I had do an alignment on it recently (it was eating up rear tires in less than 20k miles) told me the right front bearing had some slack in it! I had used an after market wheel bearing (it does have a warranty) but the whole design is such a pain, I'm considering replacing it all with a rotor over hub conversion from TAS.

I wanted to replace the left wheel bearing at some point and now I have to replace the front right one again. Both front calipers are probably original, so I was going to replace them at some point (I believe that one at least has had a sticking issue causing excessive pad wear), so it seems to me that doing the rotor over hub replacement, going with the larger disc kit which would include new wheel bearings, larger rotors and new calipers would make a lot of sense. I guess I could save a few bucks and just buy the big brake kit without the conversion to rotor over hub, but I find it very annoying to have to do so much work to replace/resurface a brake rotor! Are the TAS kits using Honda wheel bearings, or aftermarket? This is too much work to keep repeating, so I want to use quality bearings this time.

Reading some other Honda Accord forums, there seems to be a feeling that any upgrade to a larger rotor/caliper should also include an upgrade to a larger brake master cylinder and possibly a different proportioning valve. Reading through the DIY section of this conversion process, I don't see any recommendations in this regard. Do you guys feel I should install a 15/16" or 1" master cylinder if I go to the larger rotor/caliper? Will a new proportioning valve be needed? I do have 15" alloy wheels already, so I'm not worried about clearance issues with the new rotor/caliper combo. What about a larger booster? I saw a write up on a replacement in a Civic with an Accura TL booster and larger master cylinder, but nothing else. Is all this overkill for updating the front brakes?

With old brake lines all around, is there really much improvement to use steel braided lines as opposed to just replacing all of the OEM rubber with replacement rubber lines? When the budget allows, I'll replace those rear slave cylinders at some point, but I don't think the rear disc conversion is going to be in this car's future...

 

The end link is 14 ft lbs....I keep mine stock so I can't help much with upgrades and that.....

 

I bought front WBs from "hubbearing.com" that were advertised as Timken but marked on the bearing was "NTN", which is a Japanese bearing company. Very good price, too.

With rubber sway bar bushings, the silicone grease can't really attract dirt because the grease is sandwiched between either another bushing or metal. Definitely use it if you use standard bushings.

 

For the stacked bushings of the sway, tighten down the bolt until the bushings compress a bit. I never was able get them tighten to torque. You can use some silicone paste on the single bushing on the bar on the inside of the bushing to prevent squeaking.

There is a writeup in the DIY section about the rotor over the hub conversion. I'm not sure how much you will gain with an accord that is basically a daily driver, unless you start doing some engine upgrades like the H22 swap, etc...

 

I didn't think I needed to gain much in the way of braking performance, it's just that I want to replace the calipers, both front wheel bearings and make future rotor/brake jobs easier to perform. It seemed that the TAS big brake conversion accomplishes all requirements and uses all Honda brake parts at the same time.

I'll still have pain down the road changing wheel bearings, but I'm hoping the upgrade kit contains a better quality bearing (which is already pressed onto the new wheel hub, saving that machine shop cost as well), that I'm hoping will last at least another 100k miles.

Taking all that into consideration, I was thinking the conversion might be a more cost effective solution in the long run. My biggest concern is whether sticking with the stock sized brake master cylinder will actually degrade braking performance and cause brake effort to become excessive.

My gut feeling is that it shouldn't be too big of a difference brake effort wise, it's just that my son already makes a pretty negative comparison of brake effort/performance compared to his 07 Accord. I think some of this is just Honda going to more boost in later years, but if I can obtain similar braking effort/performance by upgrading the booster and master cylinder, it would make some sense to me, I guess...

At this point I'll probably just do the rotor over hub conversion and see how the boost/effort feels before changing anything else. I did replace the brake master cylinder when I first bought the car, about 40k miles ago.

 

As an update... I did just install the TAS Auto big brake rotor over hub conversion kit and I like the upgrade so far. I'm taking it in to have the wheel alignment verified after all the changes, but it appears to be actual Honda wheel bearings and hubs.

It would have been nice to have some directions with the kit, but it appeared to go pretty smoothly. My biggest problem was getting the old hub/bearings out of the steering knuckles. The front left one had not been off in a very long time and it appeared to take a LOT of force from the shop press to get that sucker off! lol

The shop removing the old bearings did sort of deform the splash shield and it seemed to be dragging somewhat when turning the front wheel. I tried to even things out and it seems to be O.K. There were some additional parts in the kit that I'm not sure what to do with. They appear to be additional rubber "boots" that cover the caliper pins, but the kit came with fully assembled caliper/bracket sets, so I don't know what they are for. Likewise it came with what looks like a different caliper mounting bolt and a couple of bolts that look similar to the ones that hold the caliper bracket to the steering knuckle, but are smaller and a finer thread pitch.

The kit includes 4 screws that hold the rotor to the hub when the wheel is removed, but the holes in the rotors don't match up with the threaded holes in the hub. Mostly an annoyance, but I wondered if others had seen this or not.

I need to put more miles on them to see how the brakes feel after the pads are fully broken in and rebleeding the brakes again. Already the new wheel bearings have solved the noise I was starting to hear out of the drive train. I'm feeling much more confident in the front end at this point in time.

Need to look at those rear brake slave cylinders next I guess! ;>)