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:
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: