Hi Everyone,

I took my car for a routine service recently and I was told that the MPI revealed that the bushings on the upper control arm on my front suspensions are cracked (4 out of 5, 5 being complete failure). I looked up the issue on this forum and elsewhere and seems like B5 audis and VWs regularly have upper control arm issues when they near the 100K mark (mine is at 103K right now). My questions are:
1. since its only the upper control arm that has problems and I will be putting less than 5k miles on the car before I sell it, will it be enough/advisable to change just the upper control arms?

2. I looked around on this forum and I have seen suggestions that if you are gonna do the Upper arms, might as well do the whole thing, but I plan on getting this done at a mechanic who has quoted me 3.5 hrs of labor to do the upper control arms. how much more labor goes into doing the lower control arms as well? I have read the DIYs for this and seems an easy enough job but I sadly cant undertake it right now due to job commitments . I also am not planning on putting in like a 1000$ for the whole job since I plan to sell the car within a year

3. I window shopped for control arm kits and have seen suggestions for FCP groton, however I couldn't find one just for the upper control arms thats an exact fit for my car and has all the hardware on their site. I did find complete upper control arm kits on ECS tuning.

Audi B5 A4 Quattro V6 30v Suspension Control Arm - 8E0407506AKT6 - Front Upper Control Arm Kit - ES#2765572
Audi B5 A4 Quattro V6 30v Suspension Control Arm - 8E0407506AKT5 - Front Upper Control Arm Kit - ES#2713340
Audi B5 A4 Quattro V6 30v Suspension Control Arm - B5UCAKIT1 - Front Upper Control Arm Kit - ES#263958

I was wondering if anybody has used these kits before and what was the experience

 

You can do uppers only. I almost did that myself.

Here's a good, cheap set:

Audi A4 Upper Control Arms Ball Joints and Hardware | eBay

G/L

 

$30 shipping? That's almost the price of the arms.

Anyhow, I've purchased single control arms from Amazon if that's an option for you.

 

Yeah, but that still puts the total cost at $80, so who cares what the price vs. shipping is? It's the total cost that matters.

And: IMHO: I think that replacing just a single control arm - out of a total of eight - is hillbilly and would make you a "lemon seller" (since he's planning to sell this one).

**No offense to you personally. That's just my opinion.

 

That does seem like a very decent price. I am always iffy when it comes to buying stuff on ebay. Atleast with companies like ECS or FCP you get some reliability that the product will be an exact match or be able to return it.

 

That ebay control arm set is mine. I accidentally bought an extra set and that's it. It's brand new. Never installed on anything and it comes with new ball joints, so I can assure you they're legit. They've just been sitting in the box in my garage.

Shipping is $25 because the kit is heavy as hell.

If I can net $70, then I'd be happy with that, so if you buy them and my total cost is $70, I'll refund you any overage.


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