Front upper and lower control arms & bushings - tough job to do???

[FD'93-525iT]

Was told I need Front upper and lower control arms and bushings plus Front stabilizer links. Is this a super tough job?

[whiskychaser]

Except for a joint splitter its a pure nuts and bolts job. Its in Bentleys or you could do a search. My tips would be:
1. Get control arms with the bushes already fitted
2. Make sure the car is very safe on axle stands
3. Use a floor jack to stop the plate at the bottom of the shock twisting when you undo the upper control arm joint nuts.
4. Make sure the groove/ridge in on the strut/plate line up when assembling
5. Fully tighten the through bolts when the car is on the ground and loaded

[Bo525i]

And remove the rubber around the old ball joints on the upper and lower arms, otherwise it will absorb the energy from any hammering. I used a pickle fork, after my splitter broke in 2 and only after removing that rubber I got the conical ball joints to separate!

[BigKriss]

bill r wrote a good writeup a few years ago how to do the job good and easy.

[rockin1978TA]

I need to do the same thing, I saw on Ebay a couple places sell whole front end kits for around$250. Has anyone tried any of the Ebay kits? They say they are just like OEM and have the bushings already pressed in. I drive the car every day to work and I have to floor it when I hit 50, so I can bypass the extreme shaking.

[Tiger]

Don't do it... those cheap parts don't last past a couple of months is what most people says... stick with Lemforder TRW and higher quality parts.

[vping]

I need to do this on my 535. Not too bad yet but I can tell it's a bit off. I kinda agree with not going with ebay as well. Are there companies out there that make it easy and sell a package deal at a decent price?

[Tiger]

No... everyone has their own brands and prices... I see Rockauto has Moog aluminum lower control arms for $72 each... a deal since Moog carries lifetime warranty.

AutohausAZ got Meyle HD Upper control arms with bushings for $77 each side...

Pelican Auto got Febi Upper control arms for $48 and you can get Lemforder M5 bushings for $22 each... Pelican should be able to press them in for you for free.

I didn't see who got the best deal on sway bar links... mandatory change and a major improvement in car suspension on itself alone!