Mark Hubley

There is some play in the right front ball joint of my 1986 944. After 200,000 miles it looks like time for new control arms. I am going to try to do the procedure myself, and there are two points on which I would appreciate some advice:

1. Where to buy? The best price I have seen so far is from Mid-America Motorworks (formerly Tweeks)--$200.00 per control arm plus refundable core charge. I have been happy with purchases from this company before. Anybody know anything about these control arms? Any other suggestions?

2. My one concern about performing the operation is whether or not I will be able to remove all of the necessary bolts. This car is eighteen years old, and I'm confident that these control arms have been attached since birth. Should I try some "liquid wrench" or some other penetrating agent to loosen the bolts, or are those products useless?

Thanks for any feedback

Mark

Chris_924s

http://www.rennbay.com/balljoint.html

PB Blaster- it's the bomb.

No Travis yet??

Ski

The bolts will come out and will come loose. I would recommend the Weltmeister front bushings and the updated Castor blocks from Paragon. The rennbay kit is nice but in the Classifieds are kits from SSI - $185 - new Chromoly ball jts, bronze ball halves, bottom cap with hole for zert, and new cap. Make a scrib mark on the caster bolt and where the tab is, after replacement of all parts, get your car aligned. You can do the ball jt, you'll need a C clamp; on the bushing for the control arm, you will need to get the sleeve out after the old rubber ones come out(hammer and good sharp chisel), vice, and impact hammer. If you have trouble getting the bushings in, leave them in the freezer overnight and then install in the arm. Do not install on your car until they come to ambient temp if you use this procedure. good luck

PorscheDoc

Yup, nothing is really tight on this job, should be pretty easy for you.

Mark Hubley

What is the caster block?

Ski

If you look under your car, the back mounting hardware on the control are is the castor block. This was done in a large rubber bushing; the updated one has a smaller rubber area and a harder buna type rubber bushing. The front bushing are just inserted into the control, which bolts through in the front crossmember.

seb928s

Make sure your arms are rebuildable with theses kits first. If buying a rebuilt control arm ask how they rebuild them if they hone out the cylinder to put bigger ball joint in then run. Travis will probably tell you more about that.

joseph mitro

mark, to answer your original question - if you decide to simply purchase rebuilt arms there are several sources. dynamic european technologies in houston offers rebuilt control arms for a good price. so does vertex. do a search in this forum and you will find a recent post about it.

otherwise, like the others have said it's not a really bad job to rebuild your own arms. i would have the arms stress-checked before rebuilding, however, to ensure they are good. this requires some dye-penetrant for the aluminum arms. my machine shop checked mine for all of $10 for both.

Mark Hubley

Thanks for all the help! I got the control arms off yesterday after work. Not to difficult! I have decided to send my control arms to SSI and let them do the installation of the new ball joints.

Cheers,

Mark

Travis - sflraver

In case anyone is interested in the bronze bushing kits (like SSI has), we will have a similar kit ready next week. Of coarse with all new Rennbay products we will be having a weekend sale. Probably put the kits up for around $100 for the sale.. I will keep everyone posted so keep an eye out for them.
Oh, and we also offer free installation for all our ball joint kits, just pay the return shipping on the arms.

Mark Hubley

Here's the final word on my control arm replacement.

1. The job was generally much easier than I thought it would be. I was expecting a hard time removing fasteners, but none of them were a problem.

2. With the front of the car on jack stands and the wheels removed, I found myself frequently using a floor jack to raise one or the other front hub. For example, the steering system on my car obstructs the bolt that holds the forward end of the control arm to the frame. Jacking up the hub moved the steering thingy out of the way.

3. Disconnect both ends of the sway bar before messing with the control arms. Otherwise, the sway bar gets in the way.

4. The new ball joints from SSI seem to be in good order. I mailed the control arms to SSI on a Wednesday and had them back the following Monday. Approximately $280 for their parts and labor.

5. It took me about two hours to get the control arms off. This includes some wasted time on the learning curve. For example, I thought the pinch bolts just needed to be loosened. I wasted about 20 minutes trying to get the ball joint out of the steering knuckle before I realized the pinch bolts must be removed. It took me about an hour and a half to get things back together. Again, learning curve. I tried attaching the first control arm to the frame before putting the ball joint into the steering knuckle; this did not work well. Then I tried attaching the joint first, then the control arm to the frame. This was much easier.

Thanks for all the help!

dlr944

So tell us how the car handles/ rides? Any noticable improvement?

Mark Hubley

It does seem to me that the car is "tighter" in the front end. I took some turns hard today (though not what I would do on the track), and it did feel a bit better. Of course, there could be some placebo effect going on here.

Two things I do know for sure:

1. When backing out of my driveway and turning hard, the front right used to feel "wobbly" and it would make a clunking sound. That's gone!

2. When I took the control arms off, I could easily move the pins of the old ball joints around like joysticks. When I got the arms back with the new ball joints, I could not move the joints around at all with my fingers.

azmi951

Travis,

I need to do my ball joints, after looking around your company seems to be the most trustworthy and has one of the best products.

Can you explain to me the difference between the delux kit and the bronze kit you will have soon. Also my arms are different one has a 951 part number and one has a 944 they are slightly different around the ball joint too. Will I need to get the right arms?

thanks

Sean

Luis de Prat

That's some good information posted above. Good tip about getting the ball joints into the knuckles before attaching the arms to the frame, Mark. I will be taking on this project within the next day or so for my 951. Glad everyone is saying it's a pretty straightforward task.

Sean, I bought both kits - SSI and Rennbay, and must say that the Rennbay ball joints have a nicer finish and the "Super Deluxe" kit itself is a true "kit," with everything you need for the job, including the zerk fittings, epoxy, etc. Not to mention the wonderful follow-up service from Rennbay, even for folks like me who are overseas.