has anyone ever tried TrueDrive control arms. replacing my upper and lower control arm on a daily drive. using the opportunity as a way of getting new bushing and ball joins. it has a sale price of 110.99 but it does have a high rating .
replacement control arms
- Thread starter scarborough
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While the price may be 'good', one has to ask themselves "how can they do that & make a profit?".
When 'new' parts are that cheap (including the arm itself), the supporting parts (bushings/BJ's) are likely cheap, cheap stuff. They might be better than worn stuff currently on the car but how long w/those parts last?
When 'new' parts are that cheap (including the arm itself), the supporting parts (bushings/BJ's) are likely cheap, cheap stuff. They might be better than worn stuff currently on the car but how long w/those parts last?
Wait... $110 for ALL FOUR? I'd be a little wary of that. If it was on sale for $220-250 per set, that might be something. Smells fishy. I could be wrong about this. It would certainly be a win if true and they're not junk. But that's dirt cheap for what I consider some critical parts.
You should be searching for the GM (or equivalent) part numbers of 19416902/19416899 for the uppers (Fits S10 too, so still available from GM for $342.91 list price but can be had for around 420.00 per pair!!! Yikes), 14075337/14075338 for the lowers. The lowers were the latest numbers before getting discontinued from GM in 2008).
Those old school factory units and earlier GM over the counter replacements were usually dip painted and not 100%, either. The last bit around the ball joint area was not painted as that's where the dip process stopped. But this is one area of many where different factories did different things at different times. Nothing was absolute about how these cars were built over the years.
You should be searching for the GM (or equivalent) part numbers of 19416902/19416899 for the uppers (Fits S10 too, so still available from GM for $342.91 list price but can be had for around 420.00 per pair!!! Yikes), 14075337/14075338 for the lowers. The lowers were the latest numbers before getting discontinued from GM in 2008).
Those old school factory units and earlier GM over the counter replacements were usually dip painted and not 100%, either. The last bit around the ball joint area was not painted as that's where the dip process stopped. But this is one area of many where different factories did different things at different times. Nothing was absolute about how these cars were built over the years.
I think four really good street ball joints can be that much themselves.
Google them or their mfgr and check to see from where they are sourced. USA/CANADA is best, Taiwan is good/decent, Australia is good, South Korea even hits the map for quality BUT, anything described as being from the PROC needs to be seriously considered suspect. Before the line up of objectors gets too long, I will concede that in certain respects some products coming from there can and will be quality built. BUT, against that is an awful lot of objectionable ccr*p that gets made there and brought over here for dumping.. The key thing here is CAVEAT EMPTOR; in english Buyer Beware!.
Nick
Nick
So what is everyone’s recommendation for a reasonably priced decent quality set of replacement control arms? Both factory style and/or tubular.
I've spent more than that on mediocre quality ball joints.
Reasonably priced and decent quality have nearly become mutually exclusive anymore. For stock style ones I'd go with Moog through RockAuto for around $250-260 last I checked. Have to get them for an S10 as they don't technically have G Body lowers. They are the same except the S10 uses 1/2" bolts vs the smaller metric bolt that the G Bodies use.
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