I'm in the process of replacing every bushing on the rear suspension of my 2001 A4 Avant qtm. So far every bushing has gone in great, with the exception of the spindle bushings (the ones that are in the rear uprights and hold the outside end of the lower control arm). In their "Assembled" kit, ECS Tuning provided "Febi" brand bushings for these parts, which cost literally 1/10th as much as the OEM parts.

I tried pressing them in with a sleeve pressed against the outside collar. This is the way the service manual says to do it. The sleeve was VERY tight, as narrow as it could possibly be and still fit on the bushing, and it went all the way around. I greased both the bushing and the hole in the upright. The surfaces were perfectly clean and free of burrs. I heated the hole in the spindle to help it expand a little, and the bushing was frozen which made it as small as possible (not by design, just because it was freezing cold in the garage). But the collar on the bushing just collapsed while I pressed it in:



Am I the only one who's ever had this issue? Is this due to cheap materials from a crappy 3rd party manufacturer? Most of the bushings in the kit were OEM, these were the only ones that were an off-brand and they're the only ones giving me problems. But the "official" parts are like $50 each (I need 4) while the Febi parts are less than $5 each. I don't want to get OEM parts and end up with the exact same result, that's too expensive a mistake to make.