What way do mechanics go about telling that this item has gone bad and needs replacing?
Also, just wondering here, if they are in there replacing the lower control arm, how much more work is it to just go ahead and replace the outer tie rod. Now I am saying it’s bad, but with a car that age and milage it has to be heading towards needing replacment and wondered if it would be a whole lot more just to go ahead and have those replaced.
Local shop I just called will do passanger side for $225 but they don’t do allignments. Not sure but gotta think the driver side would be about the same cost.
you obsess about small things. 225x2 is 500 bucks get it replaced and be done with it.
noone can tell you this repair is needed unless we see your car. you also have to allow these working stiffs to make some money.
get it repaired and start a trusting relationship with a mechanic.
O’Reilly offers Moog suspension parts which are highly recommended by many professional shops.
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/MOO0/CK620675/02937.oap?year=2003&mak
And if the original ball joint was non serviceable it would be advisable to get the entire control arm with a new ball joint as well as the bushings.
Problem is I don’t have $500 laying around. It’s going to be a struggle to come up with the $225 to fix the worse of the two sides.
Moog suspension parts are usually high quality
but I don’t recommend buying parts and bringing them to a shop
Most shops don’t like to install customer supplied shops. And if they’re willing to do it, they often will not warranty the parts
For the most part its how I have had my cars repaired over the past decade. It’s just cheaper that way and never had any issues. For me total cost has to be as cheap as possible.
I would be more concerned about the ball joints than the control arm bushings. If the control arm bushings are really in sad shape odds are the ball joints are in equally bad if not worse shape.
Control arm bushings normally won’t kill you; ball joints are more likely to.
Maybe it’s not your cup of tea but seeing as how this is a money situation you might consider scrounging a pair of control arms off of eBay. They will be non-brand name but will likely last the life of the car. I’ve seen some for 80 a pair and so on. Maybe you could work out a deal with a mobile mechanic to do the job on site. There’s a few guys in my area who have 25 years under their belts and are ASE certified at 40 bucks an hour who advertise on Craigslist for example. Just an idea.
For what it’s worth, I seldom deal with eBay, Rock Auto, or anyone online but a few times I have purchased suspension and steering components off of eBay. They have been trouble free; which is more than I can say for a number of MOOG items purchased locally.
I just did control arms on my Lincoln last fall with some no-name parts. The last 2 sets of MOOG ball joints never made it more than 40k miles and the MOOG torque rod bushings had to be modified right out of the box due to the inner sleeves being too long by 1/8". The latter made it about 20k miles before they surrendered. The second set of bushings is in testing…
The MOOG tie rods and tie rod ends on my daughter’s '05 Mustang lasted about 30k miles at which point I figured the lifetime parts can go to hxxx and we’ll go another direction with some of AutoZone’s finest even if we do pay again. So far, so good after a couple of years.
@betrand
Do you have a good jack and set of jackstands?
What about tools?
Depending on what you have, you could replace the control arms yourself
But you still need an alignment afterwards
You might find someone doing side jobs in his backyard to install discount parts you bought, you probably won’t find a decent mechanic to do it.
It is sort of like buying a new couch online from some Carolina discounter, having it dropped off in your driveway and calling a local furniure store to come out and move it into your house for just what they would charge you for delivery if you would have bought it from them.
OEM lower control arms are $405 for the pair, you could have this repaired at a Chevrolet dealer for $850, possibly less. Your tire shops are doing you no favor.
Your local mechanic charging $225 to install each control arm, he mush be wise to your “Bring my own groceries to the restaurant” strategy. I don’t fault you for trying to save money but shops will make up for the loss in profit in some way.
I have three shops around my house who have no problem installing parts we bring and just charge you the labor costs. The only downside is they are usually very busy and don’t take appointments so you have to get their early and hope they can get you in.
I think if the ball joints were bad they would have said so as there is no reason not to add to the list.
@bertrand You can determine bad bushings by prying on them when the car is in the air. One of the 2 bushings is very stiff and the other is usually fairly soft. Neither should rattle around. The stiff one should move very little with a prybar and the larger/softer one will move a bit but, again, not very much with a prybar.
Very often, to sell you new bushings, they will just point to cracks in the bushings and declare “replacement time - translation BOAT PAYMENT” when they will last quite a bit longer. What you can see is not the “working” part of the bushing is is just the exposed part.
Ball joints are just about slop in the joint and torn grease boots. If I saw a torn boot and a grease-dry joint underneath, I’d suggest replacement because dry joints greatly accelerate the wear and I don’t know how long its been that way. At 100,000+ miles, why not do the entire arm if the ball joint needs replacing? The bushings aren’t that far behind.
The lower control arm takes every bump and pothole and every acceleration and braking you do. It works very hard. It is tested by the manufacturer by puling and pushing frontwards and backwards at twice the weight of the corner of the car for millions of cycles. It is further tested at 6 times the weight for thousands of cycles. They also drive the car into a curb at 45 degrees at speed just to see that it bends, not breaks. It leads a tough life.
I am having the lower control arm replaced, while doing that, labor wise is there much more involved in replacing the ball joint? Also I can’t afford to do both side at one time so will do passagner side in july and driver side in august. I know the car needs to be alligned, do I have to do it after both or can I get buy and just have it done after the second control arm is done?
One thing I have read on line about bad bushing/control arms is that you should feel it in the steering wheel with a bit of vibratoin and the car may swever to the left or right when breaking and such. You would not know there was anything wrong with mine right now outside of the knock sound you hear from time to time. Since I didn’t get the hard sell by Goodyear (if you drive this off the lot we can not be responsible for the terible accident you will be in) My plan is to have the worse of the two side (passenger) replaced in about 2 weeks and then the other side in august.
Your shop is willing to install your parts but they want to charge you $200 per hour. It takes an hour to replace one lower control arm on this car.
Why not wait until august to do the complete job? It is likely those bushings have been torn for months before you noticed.
I have two quotes. The one where I bring the parts they will charge me $125 in labor and with parts I bring total cost would be $200, the other place I don’t bring the part nad it will be $250.
I like to get things fix as soon as possible, especially given the danger of a item like this going bad.
I wonder how much of a surcharge they have for dealing with this OP.
surcharge?