Bad luck seems to be coming my way. Still, glad I can use it all up on this civic, leaving only good luck for the prelude!
So I waited a week for some honda oem ball joint boots to turn up, it said royal mail 1st class on ebay, came via my hermes

. Then, something extremely heavy must have landed on the boots in transit, because the base metal ring (which holds it captive to the balljoint body) was bent clean in half. Completely mullered. To save waiting another week - got myself a lovely 140mile round trip to pick up the replacement near southampton tomorrow. Can't wait another week, want the car off the drive and my mate would like to take delivery lol.
Then, whilst i was waiting for the boots to turn up, i thought i'd put all new brake fluid through it and the clutch (not that it was disturbed), then i spot another war wound at the rear! When i dropped the down pipe from the manifold, even though the movement at the back box was minimal, it decided it didn't like and the backbox snapped off clean at the flange. WTF! it didn't look bad at first, but must have been rotting from the inside out and I obviously just finished it off. FFS. Still, a cheap backbox is only 30quid, but now have to wait for that to turn up.
Then the gear stick gaitor from ebay, despite being 'custom made' in the uk, was made completely too small to fit. After at least 5 messages back and forth with the seller, they said they'd make me a new one. They said they had sold 'hundreds' , but after looking at their other items, i soon found the same item in a different colour with a review saying it didnt fit from last year. Annoys me that some ebay sellers stick to a script and just generally sell jobby. "Have you tried glueing it and heat gunning it?" "Have you got the wrapper it came in?" blah blha blah. FFS, its £11 , just send me another one already. Custom made my arse.
Oh, and the crimping on the halfords earth strap was body lemonade poor, and that seemed to pull out of its own accord (no pun intended).
Still , nearly finished, just gotta pop the driveshafts back in, wizz up the ball joints and hub nuts, fill the box with oil, and she is good to go....
...Until the next issue - to be continued!