Does anyone have any experience with the Dansk control arms? A mechanic was finally able to identify a clunk in my front end as worn splines in the front left control arm and torsion bar, such that the torsion bar is bouncing back and forth at the rear mount. No immediate safety concern and he's seen it before, but he recommends replacing the arms.

The OEM arms are expensive, the Dansks are not. Anyone familiar with them? Quality parts? OEM quality rubber? Paying $460 for a pair is a lot more palatable than $1800, but if they're not as good they're not as good.

 

Dansk stuff is OK, but certainly not the same quality as OEM. You get what you pay for.

If you are on a tight budget, I might suggest finding a good pair of used ones and installing a set of ER rubber bushings on them after powder coat.

 

That's a new one.. reproduction swing arms? well they produce just about everything else that can be stamped out in steel pressings.
Steve's spot on repro parts often are of lesser quality and can suffer fitment problems you woun't experience with OEM parts.
My suggestion in this area would be a refinished used OEM part with new bushings but that's just me... Bert

 

The shame of it is that I just re-bushed my control arms with the ER rubber bushings (which was a pain in the butt to say the least), but now come to find out that the splines are worn.

If I'm going to replace them, though, I would go with new. I don't like replacing 30 year old parts with...30 year old parts, even if they might be "fresher". Maybe my first shot should be replacing the torsion bars all around with slightly stiffer ones and seeing if that tightens things up. Could be the bars' splines are worn and not the arms.

 

Take a good long look at the ride height adjustment screw. Worn out control arms sounds extremely fishy to me. If they were worn out, your front end would be sitting on the ground. Think about it.

Far more likely that you didn't replace the felt washer that goes between the adjustment screw and the aluminum cross-member.

 

That's the thing, the bushings, the felt washer, the adjustment screw, they're all in good order. Then he pops the cap off and the torsion bar has slop and bangs around. He says he's seen them get loose before and rattle, but when I think about how that happens I can't quite get it.

I think it's just that if you have a small amount of play between the faces of the splines it translates to a large motion at the other end of the bar.

 

Without seeing your parts for myself, I cannot tell you anything, however torsion bars do not rattle around unless the splines on the bars are bad. Worn/bad bushings allow the bar to touch the inside of the A-arm, but do not create a rattle.

This is very rare for factory torsion bars, but I've seen plenty of this with Swayaway ones (which is why we won't use those).

It sounds like some additional investigation is needed BEFORE you spend any more money.

 

Thanks for the input. One thing I would have liked to try was swapping in some new torsion bars to see if the issue persisted, but unfortunately he didn't have any on hand.

That said... I do have sport struts all around, might be time for slightly stiffer bars too...