Here's a pic I stole from Arnott's E-Bay page. $99.95 a pair. That's a good price. I am ordering some today.arnott sells these exact same control arms on ebay for cheap cheap money.
This is a useful thread. Since the bolts are accesible from in the engine bay, do you think it would work to simply loosen and retighten them with the car parked?I'd give it a try Mike.
Loosen them, then tighten them, when the wheels are at ride height. I would think it would ride better and the bushings would last longer.
Did it today when I replaced sharon's front bags. Sounded like they unwinded. I definetly noticed that the Moogs do not articulate like the TRW's.
I am a little late to the party. I just installed The Raybestos Professional Grade i really like them. The car leans into the turns way better than with the Moogs. Hell way better than the original TRW'S. I like the thicker arm and fat greaseable ball joint.As you may have seen in my other threads I'm doing some much overdue work in preparation for the winter on my 95. One of the things on my list was to replace all of the control arms, I knew the lower ball joints were bad and I'm sure the uppers were on their last legs too. A few years ago I had ordered some parts for my friend 93. We ordered some Raybestos upper control arms. When they arrived, one was big an heavy duty, one was identical to the stock ones. It turns out that they had just started making those heavy duty type at the time and there was still some old stock on the warehouse, so they got mis matched.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I decided to order those same parts since they seemed to be much more robust than the factory units. Rock auto did the same thing to me, sent one heavy duty one, one regular one. They said the reason was the heavy duty ones were not being produced right now. I refused to put mismatched parts in so they located a matching one and sent it. Here are the pics!
It may not be obvious in this pic, but the arm is much thicker on the new one:
The boot is thicker and replaceable:
The bushings look similar:
Here is the kicker, look at the ball joint diameter:
^^ what he said.You have to remember. The stock arm is thinner because it was forged as opposed to the thicker cast iron arms you mention. The thinner arm is stronger and lighter. The bigger greasable ball joint is not better. The stock ball joints are made from more advanced materials and are of a more advanced design which does not require regular greasing and lasts longer. Most modern cars do not have greasable ball joints anywhere on the suspension. There is a reason those "pro-grade" parts are less expensive than stock designs. The moogs are very similar. The TRW's were identical to the OEM parts because TRW made the OEM parts.