eBay Upper Control Arms?

[Peepers]

Hey guys, any of you run these eBay Upper Control Arms?

SET CONTRO UPPER SEBRING TALON AV ECLIPSE GALANT 95/99 : eBay Motors (item 170310999562 end time Feb-06-10 09:57:24 PST)

I’m looking for a replacement set and the cost of these eBay arms vs new OEM are almost 5X cheaper.

• OEM Part MR162803 - Front suspension - Upper control arm Upper control arm, galant, left 1994 – 1998 - $125.77
• OEM Part MR162804 - Front suspension - Upper control arm Upper control arm, galant, right 1994 – 1998 - $125.77

I’m not worried about the construction of the arm – steel is steel. The control arm shafts I’m not worried about either as those will be replaced with my Ingalls camber kit. It’s the off shore upper ball joint that worries me. I wonder what the quality of that ball joint is vs OEM? I only put about 1500-2000 miles on my Spyder GSX a year, so if I get 20,000 miles out of them, I’ll be happy.

What are thoughts??

 

[delta448]

OEM ball joints suck anyways. The factory recall was poorly executed on them and most were replaced with the same (but new) defective ball joints from my understanding. Have you seen the balljoint thread yet?

There were a few guys that got control arms from "bestsuspension" on eBay, seemed to work out well for them. Now it looks like the same ads are being placed by "worldsuspension".

 

[rich3389]

OEM ball joints suck anyways. The factory recall was poorly executed on them and most were replaced with the same (but new) defective ball joints from my understanding. Have you seen the balljoint thread yet?

There were a few guys that got control arms from "bestsuspension" on eBay, seemed to work out well for them. Now it looks like the same ads are being placed by "worldsuspension".

Your wrong on both accounts here.

Mitsu DID change the design of the balljoints, the original design would let moisture get in from underneath the ball joint, the revised version fixed that.

And suspension parts from worldsuspension/best suspension suck, the balljoint boots dry rot/tear within a few months of being on the car in the weather. I have tried lower control arms from world suspension on 2 different DSM's and on both of them the boots cracked open in 6 months. So I spent even more more and got OEM's and they are just fine to this day.

 

[jm1080]

Well here is my experience, I bought world suspension lower control arms and for some reason the nut always pops off! Happened twice, I guess you just need to add locktite, but still is dangerous.

I recently bought two mitsu ones and the ball joint moves easier than the world suspension ones. The world suspension ones were real stiff, that you were not able to move with your thumb, the mitsu ones you can move with your thumb, not sure which is better, but I would find stiffer the better.

Also when installing a mitsu driverside lower control arm, the boot ripped after the install when bolting it up...Terrible quality boots if you ask me. Either way, comparing both, they basically seem the same quality even if they are chinese made. I bought my tie rods from world suspension and the boots are thicker (better quality) Chinese are improving if you ask me.

 

[delta448]

Your wrong on both accounts here.

Bit of an optimistic statement there I think.

What I posted was not any fact but only my opinion. It is my opinion that OEM DSM balljoints suck, and as I noted above, I have no experience from which to form an opinion on the "worldsuspension" balljoints, perhaps they in fact suck even worse. -Or, maybe I shouldn't have used such a strong word as it must surely have offended you with some derrogatory insinuation you misinterpreted.

I didn't remember what exact revisions were made to the OEM balljoint, so thanks for that info, but the revised ones still fail just as often, so was it really an improvement?

Thanks for your opinion though, always nice when someone disagrees but is still respectful.