The often debated. Should suspension parts be replaced in pairs? Besides having both replace at the same time so both wear at the same time. Is there any reason to replace both at the same time? I am looking at replacing a lower control arm on a 2007 Nissan Murano AWD with about 145K. Driver side is bad.
In my opinion, you are fine with replacing just one damaged lower control arm at a time.
On the other hand, struts should be replaced in pairs.
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Count me on the ‘replace just the bad arm’ side. I went ahead and replaced both lower arms on my '11 MKZ when one went bad. Wouldn’t you know, the new one on the previously good side was bad! Covered, of course, but still a pain.
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Do both arms and get it over with
In fact, get complete arms with ball joints
Since the car has 145K, I’ll assume the lower control arm bushings are in marginal shape, if not outright shot.
The vehicle will need a steering alignment anyways, so you may as well get your money’s worth
If the tie rod ends or cv halfshafts are in poor shape . . . noisey, torn boots, etc. . . . replace them now
If your struts are oily/wet, or the car’s bouncing like a yo yo every time you go over bumps, do the struts now
When you say the driver side lower control arm is bad, unless I hear otherwise, I’ll assume you mean the bushing(s) are in bad shape.
To go futher into it. What happened was one mechanic had told me that the lower ball joint was going bad. I didn’t fully buy it. To save labor cost and to replace bushings as well, I wanted to go with a new control arm.
I had the tires checked for balance due to vibration and they were off.
I had another mechanic look at after I had it balanced and the vibration still there. He said it was the driver side lower bushings. Though I am still doing a new control arm with a new ball joint.
It is one of those things were things are tight and a $325 bill to fix one side and 4 new tires it is already tight. So what would be ideal and what would be acceptable and affordable is two things.
@db4690 makes a good point. My car had 60k on it, not 145k. So maybe I’d replace them both if there was any sign of wear.
I guess I would generally do both at the same time just to be done with the aggravation. Particularly if there were things like alignment that would have to be done.
On a vehicle w/nearly 150K miles, I’d do both control arms if one was bad. But that’s just an educated guess. If the good one actually is ok, and you replace the bad one and that addresses the symptoms, seems like you are good to go. One thing I worry about when replacing one part of a pair is that the item as manufactured in 2019 isn’t exactly the same as the item as manufactured in 2007. So a left from 2007 and a right from 2019 might both be ok, but not be identical matches.