Hi guys,

Before anyone says I should have got this done at the garage please bear in mind that I have a young family, we are broke and can barely afford to run the car anyway. So I have to do these things myself as cheaply as possible!

My 2002 1.4 Honda Civic failed the MOT on front tyres, shocks, track rod ends and anti-roll bar drop links. The car has been super reliable apart from the front suspension so I decided to keep her going.

I picked up all the bits at my local parts place and managed to change them all OK over two evenings. I did realise at the end that I had messed up the tracking when tightening the locking nut in the dark as I hadn't used a spanner to stop the track rod itself from turning. But seeing as this needed redoing at the garage anyway I wasn't too bothered as I needed to just limp down to the garage.

The problem is that the car is undriveable due to a really serious knocking sound that clunks with each rotation of the wheel. I think that when I removed the strut I must have let the hub hang forwards and it has disengaged/extended the drive shaft. Some guy mentioned the risk of this happening in a YouTube video but I forgot at the time as there is no mention of this being a problem in the Haynes manual.

There is nothing in the drive shaft section of the manual about how to sort this out. I'm hoping I dont need to take the bloomin hub and everything off :-(

Do you think that is what is wrong? How can I fix it?

We were meant to be going on holiday on Monday!

Please help, thanks,

Dean.