Lower Control Arms and Ball Joints

[jomama]

Just replaced both lower control arms and ball joints and left front tie rod on my MT E61 with about 95K on it. Any guesses on cost?

[jomama]

$1400 and now it's going BACK again as the shudder hasn't gone away. Alignment was out after they fixed it too - should I have to pay separately for alignment too?

[DRVN2WN]

With that list of parts, any reputable shop should have performed an alignment.

For some repairs they factor the alignment into the labor, other times it's additional. Just depends on the booking system they're using.

Also, did you take the car in for the shudder and they diagnosed the listed repairs as the fix? If so, and it didn't fix it, I'd be fighting to make them eat those costs unless they can present a compelling case that each of those parts was actually bad.

[jomama]

With that list of parts, any reputable shop should have performed an alignment.

For some repairs they factor the alignment into the labor, other times it's additional. Just depends on the booking system they're using.

Also, did you take the car in for the shudder and they diagnosed the listed repairs as the fix? If so, and it didn't fix it, I'd be fighting to make them eat those costs unless they can present a compelling case that each of those parts was actually bad.

Well that's a good point and I've thought about this as well but apparently I needed the control arms and ball joints replaced as they showed me how worn out they were. Do you think that still qualifies? I had thought about this as well: if the goal was to fix the shudder and they didn't do that, regardless of what they did, the initial problem wasn't resolved. Not sure how to handle this but any advise would be appreciated!