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Never discount the possibility of cheap parts being made cheaply! Glad you got it pretty well under control now!
That slight vibration at 65 could be caused by a number of things. I’m not sure that an engine mount is likely to be the cause, BUT if you know it’s bad, then go ahead and take care of it. Your vibration could be a tire a little out of balance, or a problem with one of your tires (such as a bulge / bump you don’t see) or even a bit of a tweak / bend in the wheel. You can try rotating tires front to back and see if the vibration moves with the wheels. That would help you to narrow down the cause.
A pipe maybe, but it’ll have to be short enough to NOT get into the cat and ruin the inside of it, and you’ll still need a way to reattach the flange. Best if you can get access to a welder.
I have never seen a rotor with that particular issue, but cheap Chinese parts . . . . sometimes you get what you pay for. That being said, I also run those cheap Chinese rotors, and haven’t had any problem with them.
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I will commiserate with you . . . . for 6 years, I had a Honda Accord with EXACTLY the same symptoms. I replaced pretty much EVERYTHING in the braking system by the time I was done, and the pedal never got any better. Hopefully, you will have better luck with yours than I had with mine!
Hard to say without hearing it, but when I hear the term whistle relating to a running car, I immediately think of a vacuum leak. That would probably be the first thing I would check out.
As for struts, on a budget, I have had pretty good luck with KYB GR2 struts. NOT a good choice if you are lowering your Accord, but if it is left at stock ride height, you should get a pretty reasonable life out of them, and they can be had for a bit more than $50 per strut.
First off, buy, borrow, acquire a torque wrench, and try to get at least a halfway decent one. If you are doing suspension / steering work it is absolutely a must have tool.
When you take a brake apart, if you bleed the old fluid out of the piston the way Eric does in his videos (clamp the brake hose just above the caliper, attach a bleeder hose / cup, open the bleeder screw, then seat the piston) you should be able to seat the piston with little more than hand pressure, or a small pad spreader. If you are getting in there with the big C clamp, and having a difficult time seating the piston with that, your caliper needs to be rebuilt, or replaced.
As long as the piston seats without much difficulty, then things should be ok. You can clean the slider bolts with some brake parts cleaner and a wire brush. Inspect the rubber covers that the slider bolts go through. If they are cracked or torn, buy a brake hardware kit. Clean out the holes that the slider pins go into. Again, a round brush (can get ’em cheap at harbor freight) and some brake parts cleaner will do the job nicely. Lubricate the nice clean pins with silicone paste, or one of those little packets of disc brake lube (don’t use wheel bearing grease for this job). Make certain that the stainless steel clips are in place on both ends of the caliper bracket so that the pads fit in snugly. They shouldn’t be a TIGHT fit, you should be able to install them with minimal difficulty, but they shouldn’t be loose either. Those stainless clips should get a bit of silicone paste too. Not so much that it will get onto the rotors or pad surface, just a thin coating so that the backing plates for the pads can move easily back and forth in the clips.
Final bit, make sure that the bit stainless clip is in place in the caliper. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve found those missing from Accords! If any of those clips are missing, mangled, broken, etc, buy a hardware kit for the front brakes and replace them all, as well as those rubber covers for the sliders.
Once you do all of this, your front brakes are good to go. Clean the hub area with a wire brush. Wipe a thin coating of never seize on the hub so your rotor won’t corrode into place. Clean your new rotors with brake parts cleaner to get off all the stuff they put on at the factory to keep them from rusting before you buy them. Make sure your pads are clean, spray the braking surface with brake parts cleaner if necessary. If the pad braking surface is not smooth and uniform, put a sheet of sand paper down on a scrap of wood (maybe 100 grit or so) and rub the pad, braking surface down, on the paper until you get a smooth surface.
Since you are using old pads, make sure to follow some sort of bed in procedure to get them acquainted with the brand new rotors. Final thing, when assembling everything, be sure all bolts / fasteners and lug nuts are torqued to factory spec. That SHOULD eliminate ANY possibility of pulsation / shaking caused by the front brakes.
Next time it won’t start, watch the little (usually green) key icon on the dash. Is it constantly flashing while you are trying to start the vehicle? Sometimes the transponder keys get flakey. If the truck isn’t reading the key properly, it will crank, but the immobilizer will prevent it from starting.
Often, a vibration when running is an indication that one (or more) cylinders are not firing properly.
You can do a power balance test on the engine, start it up, and one at a time, disconnect the wiring from the fuel injectors. When you disconnect each one, you should notice the engine running rougher, and a drop in engine RPM.
When you get to the one that does NOT make a difference when you disconnect it, or makes a much smaller difference than the rest, that is the cylinder where your problem is.
Check the spark plug on that cylinder for wear, damage, being loose in the head etc. Check the plug wire for any cracks / damage, or excessive resistance. Check the distributor cap / rotor for cracks, worn or damaged terminals, or carbon tracking. If those all look good, you could try swapping the injector from that cylinder to another, and then do the balance test again and see if the problem followed the injector to the other cylinder (indicating that the injector is not working properly).
If none of that identifies the problem, then I would say it is time to do a compression test to see if there is something mechanically wrong with that cylinder.
Pull the high tension wire (spark plug wire between coil and distributor) from the distributor and either arrange it close to a ground, or attach it to a spark tester. Disconnect points (trigger) wire from negative side of coil, turn on key, and use a jumper to momentarily connect the negative side of the coil to ground, then disconnect it. If you get spark, coil is good, if you don’t get spark coil isn’t working.
If the coil is good, then I would look carefully at the trigger wire between the coil and the distributor to see if it is shorted somewhere, keeping the coil constantly grounded instead of pulsing it when the points open and close.
Just because you recently replaced a part does NOT mean it is good. I have had a brand new alternator fail in under a week! It isn’t a bad idea to charge the battery fully, make sure battery connections are clean and tight, make certain the alternator belt is tensioned properly, then start the engine and check voltage at the battery. With the engine running, you should be at, or very near 14.2 volts at the battery. Anything much below that would indicate a problem somewhere in the charging system.
When you blow a fuse for a fan circuit, it means either that fan motor has completely shorted, OR it is worn, and drawing too much current. There are two fans on your car. One is controlled by engine temperature, and has the primary responsibility of cooling the radiator. The other is controlled by the AC system, and has primary responsibility for cooling the AC condenser.
The radiator fan motor is protected by fuse number 21 (20A) in the under hood fuse box. The condenser fan is protected by fuse number 34 (15A) also in the under hood fuse box.
Since you say only one fan runs when you turn on the AC, I am assuming that fuse 34 is ok, as is that fan motor. Fuse 21 (20A) is the one you keep blowing, and that protects the radiator fan motor. Inspect the wiring for the radiator fan motor (that is the one that does NOT work, should be the passengers side fan) and if the wiring is all good, no damage to the insulation, no shorts, cuts etc. then I would expect that the fan motor has failed.
The way to test the fan motor according to Honda is to disconnect the fan wiring from the harness. Looking into the connector, with the lock tab pointing up, connect the terminal on the right to ground, and the terminal on the left to battery +. If the fan fails to run, or does not run smoothly, replace the motor. However, if it is regularly blowing 20 A fuses, it is a pretty good bet that the motor is bad.
I have always relied on a bit of heat and penetrating oil around the studs, and hub, and a good solid beating with a big hammer, working on opposite sides alternately. That is to say, you whack the snot out of one side of the drum a few times, then rotate the drum 180 degrees and whack the snot out of it again. Also, sometimes hitting the front of it, driving it back onto the hub a bit will help to break it lose I’ve never had one NOT come off that way, but if that absolutely isn’t doing it for you, you could try something like this:
Once you get the bugger off there, clean up the hub area really good, and a touch of never seize should help to keep the next one from permanently attaching it’s self.