My OEM's were at 125,000 miles on OEM grease before pitting. And that was after 5-6 years (previous owner) and 3 years (me) of launching with sticky 255's on the rear, which is way more grip than the OEM design was built for.The car is used primarilly for autox, but still has seen a lot of hard launches inlcuding on lincoln concrete in its day on courses where hard launches are advantageous. And since launching well with wider, stickier tires on this car involves launching at around 5,000 to 6,000 rpm, it is no wonder the cups take a beating.

We have to keep in mind the system was designed for the OEM design.. So any design overhead was built from there. So narrower, midish grip tires. Many s2k's have seen mods that end up putting a lot more strain on the axles. And the idea is for failures to occur in the order of : 1) Axles, 2) Diff, 3) Tranny so you are at least failing in the cheaper areas first :P Not to mention since most of us have S2k's that have had multiple owners, we do not know what previous owners did with the car. Even though it is built pretty much the opposite of what you want for straight line speed, people for some reason choose it to go out and street/drag race with, so that means lots of very hard launches in a car that was meant to be best around a track.

 

Yeah...but this doesn't happen on Corvettes, M3's (look past the jokes about 100+K mile M3's not existing), Miatas, 240SX, Mustangs, or many other similar cars used for similar purposes.

FWIW, this issue is also prevalent on stock Accords, TL's, Civics, CR-V's...but not prevalent on Camry's, Lexus GS's, Ford Tauruses, Rad4's, etc.

I have two TSX's and a CR-V with the wobbles. One of them started doing it at like 60K miles.

It seems to be a Honda problem.

 

Again if you want get 200k+ miles out of them there is a way to address it, by adding spacers at first sensation of vibration under acceleration and then swapping cups - and can feel free to change the grease to your preference at that time. If the axles haven't been abused, there is no reason why you couldn't get 200k or more out of them which is all you can ask for out of a wearable item. As mentioned I got 230k out of mine before I had to replace the cups entirely employing these interim fixes, and mine were "abused" running boost and 295-315 section width rear tires. I actually went through 2 rear ends and two transmissions in that span of mileage, never actually broke an axle before.

 

Did you consider replacing the entire enchilada with an OEM axle assembly ($800) in one job instead of piecing out the work?

 

Vettes and M3's have torque, thus are not constantly launched at 6000 rpm with a clutch drop Again why making a straight line racer out of the S2k is illogical (but thats fine as most car stuff we do is illogical!).

But, your input on the other hondas also having these issues lends more to the thought it is a Honda thing. Granted, most hondas are torqueless wonders but I doubt you have been hard launching the CR-V enough for that to be the cause

Miatas do have the same sort of tq issue that Hondas have so good point there. I know of plenty of miatas that break axles, but not sure I have heard of the pitting issue like we are discussing here.

Due to the nature of the failures (pitting) I lean more towards hardening process or materials than grease.

I have had one pit and vibrate on the S2k and one break (broke in the thinnest part of the tripod/bearing carrier)

 

Absolutely not, because of the expense. I'm more then happy to trade $100 and 1 hour of my time to put in spacers for initial cure, and then approx. $10 for some grease and 3 hours and some mess for the cup swap. Also keep in mind if you average 10k a year on your S, we are talking maybe 5-7 years before employing one of these next fix intervals.

 

Do people really take 3 hours to swap the cups ?? Took me less than an hour on mine. One axle nut was totally messed up (apparently whomever owned it in the past did the tsb but managed to bugger the nut up ... had to be cut off later when I needed to pull the axle out for a different reason) so I actually did it without pulling the axle from the hub. Just popped out the lower ball joint and that gave me enough room to move the axle back, swap cups and put it back together. A bit messier under the car doing it, but did not take much time at all really. I also did clean out the old grease and put in new grease while doing it. I want to say it took me about 20 minutes to remove them, 20 minutes to clean them and fill with new grease and 20 minutes to put them back together approximately.

 

All other Hondas are FWD but that's only a correlation not necessarily the causation. I rather attribute it to the double duty with combined steering and drive duty of FWD in general.

 

Depends if its a race or not and if you have ever done before and have the proper tools, lift etc. The mere fact this topic has come up means safe bet someone hasn't done before. 3 hours is a good est to plan for most folks, unless they have everything going for them. But lets not get hung up on that, if you can do it in less time it further makes my point of being well worth the trouble to do, rather then dropping $800 on a new set that actually have a good 100k left in them if the methodology I brought up is employed.

 

If there is even the possibility that the Honda grease is a contributing factor, shouldn't the recommended sequence for the axle lifespan prolonging techniques be:

1. Swap axle cups (and clean then repack with superior grease, like redline)

2. When a second prolong is needed, add spacers

It seems its being recommended to do spacers first instead. The reason being its less messy. But if you are going to keep the car for a long time, doing the swap first means more of the lifespan elapses with the superior grease, presumably meaning longer overall lifespan.

That of course assumes the grease is in any way a factor. Which doesn't yet seem conclusive...