lower control arm 2g question

[dstarM]

I went to the shop and they said I needed a new lower control arm, for both sides of my car, but they were estimating the cost to be 1500.00 would you say that's a rip off? or a fair price? I feel like it's a pretty easy job to do, and not worth the 1500.00 the part alone is like 60.00

 

[jtmcinder]

It would especially a rip-off if your control arms hadn't been replaced (yet) under the recall. Either way, yes, that's a rip-off.

 

[Anubis_4_99]

huge rip off. if you have any mechanical ability at all (meaning at least changed your own oil once) you should be able to swap out a control arm.

that is just a crazy high price and they are trying to rip you off.

 

[eastace6]

Thats about triple the price of what out should cost major rip off

 

[crimsondragon]

Should take them an hour at most on both sides. I would jack up the car and with one hand on top of the wheel and the other on the bottom, try wiggling it. If there's play, replace them.
Get one of these: 3/4" Forged Ball Point Joint Separator

That should break the ball joint loose from the knuckle, then unbolt it from the subframe. An hour at most if the joint is really wedged in the knuckle

 

[stuckwithgsx]

Try it yourself. If you fail then you already have the parts and you can find a better shop that will come and pick your car up, fix it, and bring it back to your front door, for 1500 or less.

Best option I see here, find a friend who know a little bit about mechanics of any sort. Go buy a haynes/chilton/FSM and go to town. It may take you all day or all night maybe an entire weekend. But you will learn!

If you're the kind of guy that just takes the car to the shop no matter what.....then 1500 is cheap for this project

 

[Anubis_4_99]

Try it yourself. If you fail then you already have the parts and you can find a better shop that will come and pick your car up, fix it, and bring it back to your front door, for 1500 or less.

Best option I see here, find a friend who know a little bit about mechanics of any sort. Go buy a haynes/chilton/FSM and go to town. It may take you all day or all night maybe an entire weekend. But you will learn!

If you're the kind of guy that just takes the car to the shop no matter what.....then 1500 is cheap for this project

even if the op is one of those guys, that is still not cheap.

 

[awddarrell]

i say that 400 at the stealership is pushing th limits of what that should cost. do it your self it is not hard, get a chilltins and do it yourself.

 

[dstarM]

that's what I thought! Man I'll just do it myself then thanks for the replies

 

[2GEffect6]

biggest rip off ever i changed my own in 10 min and bought slightly used ones for 45 dollars

 

[jtmcinder]

i changed my own in 10 min

(A) the author is fond the of the rhetorical device known as "hyperbole"

(B) the author smokes a lot of dope and forgot that THC causes time distortions

(C) the author is full of sh!t

(D) all of the above

- -

Encouraging the OP is cool. Misleading him is not.

 

[Boostinsideways]

Well to be fair cinder. I could change the LCAs in 10 minutes, each, if the car was allready on jack stands and had the wheels removed.

The longest part of the whole process would pulling the car in my shop, and putting it on stands / removing the front wheels and then putting the wheels back on.

The ball joints, if they were being stubborn might bump it to 12 minutes actually working on each arm.

I mean, its what? 3 Bolts each? Inner, outer, ball joint?

But yeah thats an effing huge ripoff. Last shop I worked for charged 75$ per billable man-hour. Through in an alignment and that would 75$+ 80$ for a 4 wheel alignment. And what 65$ each for parts? Its At most a 300-400$ job.

 

[Black'95]

(a) the author is fond the of the rhetorical device known as "hyperbole"

(b) the author smokes a lot of dope and forgot that thc causes time distortions

(c) the author is full of sh!t

(d) all of the above

- -

encouraging the op is cool. Misleading him is not.

roflroflroflrofl

 

[jtmcinder]

At the risk of offending the OP or getting into a worthless internet battle, my point was that saying to someone like the OP (as inferred from his original question and other posts) that swapping front LCAs is a "ten minute job" is hugely misleading.

At the risk of inviting a multiple-choice reply about me, I will say that, yes, if the car were already on a lift, I could probably swap both front LCAs in less than twenty minutes, assuming that I'd been spraying all the nuts with bolts with PB'laster for the previous week.

At the risk of sending the OP back to another rip-off shop, I'll warn him that working on DSMs is never easy the first time you do a particular job; there is always some small trick to it that isn't in the FSM. In this case, it's whether you attach the shock to the LCA first and do the hard pushing while trying to get the ball-joint's post lined up, or put the LCA on first and then try to push the shock up. To be honest, I can't remember the order any more (see previous post on THC and note another side-effect besides time-distortion is short-term memory loss).

There's a time for showing off and there's a time for being honest with the OP. We don't want to mislead him and we don't want him feeling like a total dork when the job takes him more than an hour, which is what I predict.

 

[Black'95]

At the risk of offending the OP or getting into a worthless internet battle, my point was that saying to someone like the OP (as inferred from his original question and other posts) that swapping front LCAs is a "ten minute job" is hugely misleading.

At the risk of inviting a multiple-choice reply about me, I will say that, yes, if the car were already on a lift, I could probably swap both front LCAs in less than twenty minutes, assuming that I'd been spraying all the nuts with bolts with PB'laster for the previous week.

At the risk of sending the OP back to another rip-off shop, I'll warn him that working on DSMs is never easy the first time you do a particular job; there is always some small trick to it that isn't in the FSM. In this case, it's whether you attach the shock to the LCA first and do the hard pushing while trying to get the ball-joint's post lined up, or put the LCA on first and then try to push the shock up. To be honest, I can't remember the order any more (see previous post on THC and note another side-effect besides time-distortion is short-term memory loss).

There's a time for showing off and there's a time for being honest with the OP. We don't want to mislead him and we don't want him feeling like a total dork when the job takes him more than an hour, which is what I predict.

Blam! Good call!

 

[Anubis_4_99]

At the risk of offending the OP or getting into a worthless internet battle, my point was that saying to someone like the OP (as inferred from his original question and other posts) that swapping front LCAs is a "ten minute job" is hugely misleading.

At the risk of inviting a multiple-choice reply about me, I will say that, yes, if the car were already on a lift, I could probably swap both front LCAs in less than twenty minutes, assuming that I'd been spraying all the nuts with bolts with PB'laster for the previous week.

At the risk of sending the OP back to another rip-off shop, I'll warn him that working on DSMs is never easy the first time you do a particular job; there is always some small trick to it that isn't in the FSM. In this case, it's whether you attach the shock to the LCA first and do the hard pushing while trying to get the ball-joint's post lined up, or put the LCA on first and then try to push the shock up. To be honest, I can't remember the order any more (see previous post on THC and note another side-effect besides time-distortion is short-term memory loss).

There's a time for showing off and there's a time for being honest with the OP. We don't want to mislead him and we don't want him feeling like a total dork when the job takes him more than an hour, which is what I predict.

wise words from a wise man

 

[murcielago]

Does Not Take 10 minutes! impossible! If done right thats not possible, you HAVE to take the spindle of the axle and take that 22mm NUT off the Spindle side..And then taking it off the car side.. why it doesnt take 10 minutes! because you gotta toruqe it! Service Manual says to Torque it 43-51ftlbs on the spindle side and in order to get that torqued you gotta have space which means to take the axle of from top of it., not excuse!, and teh car side nut and stud torque is :65ftlbs. thats not weak man, i wouldn't play with that.. torque your suspension components! is necessary....

 

[jtmcinder]

Does Not Take 10 minutes! impossible! If done right thats not possible, you HAVE to take the spindle of the axle and take that 22mm NUT off the Spindle side..And then taking it off the car side.. why it doesnt take 10 minutes! because you gotta toruqe it! Service Manual says to Torque it 43-51ftlbs on the spindle side and in order to get that torqued you gotta have space which means to take the axle of from top of it., not excuse!, and teh car side nut and stud torque is :65ftlbs. thats not weak man, i wouldn't play with that.. torque your suspension components! is necessary....

Hm. No idea how the FSM tells you to do this job, but I know how Mitsu techs are taught to swap the LCAs for the recall and it doesn't involve the axle at all. Done slowly and safely, as they are taught: You put on a spring compressor so there's slack. Remove the lower shock bolt. Remove the inboard LCA bolt. Remove the ball-joint nut. Use funky tool to push ball-joint post out of spindle. Install new LCA in exact-opposite order: ball-joint, inboard, shock. This is a .5 hr per side job by their book, IIRC (which I doubt I do, see previous posts mentioning THC). Key point - if I'm understanding your post - is that the spindle (or knuckle) never comes off the car since the upper A-arm is never touched at either end.

Why is this important to Mitsu? Because it means that they can say that no alignment is needed when they swap your LCAs under the recall. Whether the car actually ends up with the same alignment is a different story. In theory, because they didn't touch the tie-rods and the knuckle never came off and the new LCA is the same as the old LCA, they can avoid doing an alignment when doing the recall.

 

[jtmcinder]

Super technical point for those really into this stuff:

The problem with the standard way of swapping LCAs in that the inboard LCA bolt is usually tightened while the front suspension is at full droop. This is bad. Because the OE bushings are all bonded rubber, they should only be tightened with the car sitting on the tires at static ride height. In other words, after the new LCA is installed, only the ball-joint nut should be fully tightened. The car should then be put down on its tires and the lower shock bolt and the inboard LCA bolt should be tightened with the car sitting at the static ride height.

Why?

Because tightening the bolts with the fronts at full droop will cause there to be a twisting pre-load on the rubber bushings. This is bad because it is a very non-linear spring-like effect, it puts a force on the shock's shaft, and it contributed to early ripping of the bushings.

When my LCAs were replaced under the recall, I watched from outside to see what they did. They did it wrong. So I went to a cool oil-change place, climbed into their pit, loosed the four bolts in question, and then retightened them.

And then I went and bought another bottle of Ex-Lax because you can't be as anal as I am without a little help in the mornings. And sometimes coffee and cigarettes are not quite enough.

 

[Boostinsideways]

Cinder would I be right in thinking that if you do not have access to a pit you could hand tighten the nuts, put the wheels back on, and then jack it back and let the front suspension rest on jack stands so its not at full droop, and then tighten the nuts?

Thats the way I was taught to do it, but its also redneck/shade-tree mechanic style.

 

[dalesmitsu]

You should try what was mentioned. Either call the mitsu dealer or take your car to them have them run your vin under balljoint recall. Have them do it first, if they weren't already done under the recall. But still buy the tools for when next time they did changed you have them handy.

This what I'm doing in a few days.

 

[jtmcinder]

Cinder would I be right in thinking that if you do not have access to a pit you could hand tighten the nuts, put the wheels back on, and then jack it back and let the front suspension rest on jack stands so its not at full droop, and then tighten the nuts?

Yes, but Rhino ramps might be better.

ps. the car was named Cinder; I'm Toby