My mother lives in a gated community with speed bumps. She abhors speed bumps and is actively defiant towards them, keeping a steady speed whilst steering as far to the right as possible so as to strike the horrid things with only the left side of her car.

Althea is the given name of the 1990 Honda Civic hatchback which bore the brunt my mother's war on speed bumps for nearly 20 years.

When she gave me Althea I replaced the shocks/struts and a few other things needed. Everything seemed fine except when I hit speed bumps. Weird, right? It made this awful noise like a child rubbing a balloon to torment others.

Anyway, I figured out it was some rubber bushings on the left upper suspension arm making the noise. They weren't "bad" per se, just annoying.
"How annoying were they?" I hear you ask.
They were so annoying....
Well, that was something I tormented myself over.
I hated that noise, but it wasn't causing any other harm than making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Do I replace just the bushings, or the whole arm? Do I buy it from Honda or ebay? Exactly how much time and money is this noise worth to me?

Last September (over a year after discovering the noise) I decided to spend the money on buying the whole arm assembly from Honda. It cost at least three times as much as just the bushings, or an ebay arm, but I decided I was worth it. It would take less time to install, and I knew it would fit correctly. When the part arrived I placed it in the passenger compartment so I could glare at it every time I went over a bump. I finally installed it today. It took all of about twenty minutes.

Althea is now quiet and the expensive part can continue to be glared at in the above picture rather than on my passenger floorboard. The arm was actually only about $120 from Honda, but I can buy almost a complete suspension for my car off ebay for that ;)

Now, about this other box of new parts I have for Althea... the receipt says June of 2009....