Already done them before when I had my '93 Civic coupe. I do not really remember them being that hard though. I know I did not use my air compressor and air tools (I hardly ever do... Kinda makes me wonder why I have a 60 gallon compressor... lol), but I do have a ball-joint separator (both fork and press) and a breaker bar with "big black" (my thick walled pipe I slide over the end of the breaker bar for more leverage).

Definitely would be a lot easier if they did not go through the fork at the bottom of the strut.

When I did the Si, I needed to detach the lower control arm from the hub and brake assembly. After removing the front anti-roll bar. After removing the brakes. For some reason (the car was lowered, had bigger brakes, thicker anti-roll bars, and all kinds of fun hardware), it was a really tough job.

Yesterday I could not remember how I did it, but while doing my brakes last night and examining how I would do the halfshaft, it all came back to me.

The way I did it, was I left the lower ball joint alone, I removed the top 3 strut bolts, the 2 UCA bolts (leaving the upper ball joint attached) and then removed the bolt throught the LCA/strut fork. I then just pulled the whole strut assembly out and halfshaft was easy to change at that point, and then just put everything back together. Might give that method a try if you have one go out in the future. I have to admit, I hate dealing with the ball joints (as I always seem to rip the boots), so I try and avoid them... lol