Replacing rear control arms

[Ricky Bobby]

Originally Posted by DillonInCO

Some awesome information in this thread, and great video, thanks for the link! Control arms, ball joints and integral links will be on their way soon

And, davintosh, thank you for the offer on the ball joint remover, but as I'm sure any standard ball joint removal tool will work (I imagine it doesn't need to be the BMW special tool) and I'm likely to be using it again, I think I'll just buy one.

Dillon, you might want to take Dave (davintosh) up on his offer, yes you can use any standard ball joint tool I assume with the proper adapters and some intuition.

However, that doesn't mean its going to be as easy with the universal tool as using the BMW specific tool. We are all on the forums to help each other out and if the BMW specific tool did not make the job much simpler, none of the forum members would own one (and I know of 4 members on this forum alone that own the special tool for these rear ball joints!).

Trust me, if there's anything I've learned on my cars its that the job is so much easier with the right tool! At your mileage the parts on the rear definitely need to be addressed for sure.

[Doru]

For Ricky Bobby

I used the vicegrips like in the vid. They will not hold the 2 parts together (maybe they are for the e39 - because it's a different layout: no air springs), the vicegrips merely hold the upper part in place, so it doesn't slip, so there is no marring. The C-clamps might be a tad too big, but if you use them, just get 2 larger steel pads (manufactured) where they clamp with the tiny round ones, to hold both parts on. The 2 tiny round integrated pads of the C-clamp might slip. The jaws of the vicegrips go radial, so there's more room to hold on to. The lower part (swing arm) will have play left-right, because it's thinner than the wheel carrier, so they're NOT tight together. The play is minimal (maybe 1-2 mm), so the only way for it to slip is if you push too hard, and the swing arm goes down and out. The vicegrip will still stay in place on the wheel carrier.
Having 2 larger steel plates as jaws, will minimize this.

Not sure if this makes sense?