I was surprised to find out that on the “wishbone” front suspension in the 90-93 Accord among other Honda cars, the caster and camber are not adjustable. Hence, you do not have to worry about having an alignment done after replacing struts, ball joints, control arms, bushings, etc. If you want to replace the tie rod ends, you can mark their position on the tie rod to avoid needing the toe set. All in all, a very convenient suspension to work on, and since mine had a broken spring and two bad upper ball joints, that is a good thing.
An economical way to have the struts done is to buy all the replacement parts yourself (preferably brand name struts such as Monroe or Gabriel at the low end and KYB at the high end, and brand name suspension components with new fasteners and a lifetime warranty from Moog). I buy all of this stuff from O’Reilly who also offers a farm discount if you are into that sort of thing. Pack the new parts in a sturdy cardboard box with the old struts and start calling around the “Mom n pop” repair shops. Eventually you will find one that will allow you to bring in the box’o’struts and they will rebuild them with the new hardware for 20-25 dollars a piece.
So instead of a $1000+ suspension and brake job, I got
$93 – 2x Monroe strut cartridges
$25 – 2x Monroe upper strut mounts 901940 (cheap because these struts have no bearings as in a normal MacPherson suspension)
$40 – 2x Moog strut boot kit K9306
$72 – Moog front springs 9258
$174 – 2x Moog upper ball joint K9815,K9816
$20 – Brakebest front pads
$13 – Brakebest rear rebuilt shoes
$12 – Brakebest rear hardware kit
$5 – Brake fluid
$45 – Strut labor
Free – Working on a day off
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$499 less than half price, and lifetime replacement on everything except the strut cartridges.
Loaned a 2 jaw “pitman arm” puller from Autozone to separate the ball joints from their respective spindles.
The stabilizer bar bushings were close to new already from previous owner. I did not replace the lower control arm bushings, lower ball joints, or tie rod ends. Those can all be done at a later point without disturbing the alignment. Smear the ball joint boots, strut boots, tie rod ends, axle boots and bushings with non-petroleum grease and everything should be good to go another 100,000 miles at least.