Torn control arm bushings on a 14 year old car is not unusual in my location, I have even had to replace many bushings and control arms on vehicles under warranty.
Generally customers with old cars don’t complain about the loose suspension and steering, they got used to it over time. When I road test a vehicle with loose suspension bushings I wonder why they put up with a vehicle in this condition.
The bottom picture . . .
That’s the condition the bushings were in on one of my cars . . . the 20-year old daily driver with about 100K
And the bushings on my brother’s 2008 suv with 150K were in the same shape
Replacing the arms on both vehicles made a dramatic difference on all counts . . . noise, handling, etc.
I’ve already spent a few thousand on car repairs in the past couple months, and every time I check they say my car needs at least another thousand in repairs. Pretty soon it’s not going to be worth keeping this car and that money may be better spent on a down payment for a brand new car with a brand new suspension, engine, transmission etc lol. That’s my current mind set. If I get the bushings and control arms done, what will come next to spend a thousand on next month?
That “thousand dollar” mark is very suspicious to me. I strongly recommend you find another mechanic. Crooked mechanics always seem to find a $1000 repair every time they look at a vehicle.
I’m going to take my time, and shop around and get a second opinion. Thank you
DJ is on the island of Oahu so costs are probably higher then most places in the 48 states . Also this is a 2006 Corolla so without actually knowing what these repairs were using the term Crooked Mechanic seems a little out of line.
If this car has over 100K . . . the control arm bushings may be in poor shape by now
The consistency of the “$1000” repair is a concern. I am surprised that this figure is still used, you would think that they would have raised the figure to account for inflation.
My mother used to take her car to a certain place that did cheap oil changes. Every time they did an oil change, they gave her a list of needed, life threatening, urgent repairs that always added up to $1000. Every time they were bogus. She did have two other trusted mechanics that confirmed when I told her they were bogus.
There was a TV “magazine” programs that did a segment on crooked mechanics. They noticed that almost every bogus repair was close to $1000.
One thing that led me to ultimately decide not to get this repair at this particular shop at this time was that I wasn’t given a written estimate of the scope of the work and a detailed description what exactly was going to be fixed. I was called by the service writer on my cell phone while I was at the mall and he said something like the lower control arms are barely hanging on and it’s going to cost $1,200 and will you authorize us to do the work now? So, I said no, just do the air conditioning repair work that i brought the car in for today (which cost me $360). This took place this past Saturday. It was kind of a jarring experience so I decided to hold off.
Congrats. You learned an important lesson. Unless you have completely neglected the vehicle, and something is actually broken, you do not need to succumb to such pressure sales techniques and can take the time to inform yourself. As I and others have pointed out you should be able to get your front control arms replaced on your Corolla for under $500. And that would be using top quality parts. If you were trying to be really cheap you could probably get it done for $250. I think you should find another mechanic.
