My E46 started handling unpredictably: darty, tramlining behavior, vibrating during braking and when rounding a soft curve. Checked it out and found both lower ball joints were toast, so I needed to replace the control arms/ball joint assembly and the suspension ball joints on both sides.
Did a little shopping. Lemforder was about $500 for the four pieces. Man, my whole car was $2300. Looked at 1aauto.com, and found they had a four piece XI kit for $169 shipped. I am pretty skeptical of cheap parts, but thought I would give it a go.
Parts came two days after I ordered them. Looked pretty damn good to me.
Couple hours to install these bad boys, mostly getting up and down to get the right tools. It's a super simple job. I had replaced the bushings earlier this year with Powerflex urethane bushings, so I didn't need to remove the lolipops for the project.
Car handles like a dream now. Obviously a big improvement from the old worn parts. Time will tell how they last. I got the car two years ago with 203k miles and and have put 10k miles on it. I would be thrilled with two years and 10k miles out of them and will definitely consider these again if I need to do this on another one of our clunkers.
A good looking rig.
Now to get the collision damage repaired.
Nicely done! I'll have to keep an eye out for that store when I need some suspension stuff. These cars do handle so well. I really think these are the best cars ever made. Not necessarily in quality or longevity, though they are better than many others that way, but in overall feel.
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Tie rods should probably be replaced also.
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Mine was shot too and used Delphi from Rockauto with replaceable ball joints in case it fails. Only been installed for 2 months so now clue of its longevity yet.
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