eBay for suspension parts E53 4.4i
 

I am experienceing the dreaded squeaking and clunking sounds from my front end when going slow and over bumps. I have searched the threads and found many references to this issue. The concensus seems to be that the sway bar links are the primary culprit, but in certain cases the control arms and bushings, as well as, ball joints and tie rod ends can also be contributory to the symptoms. I have a 2002 4.4i with sport package and 86,000 miles. I found a seller on eBay who is selling what they call a control arm front end steering suspension kit. It includes L/R lower control arms with bushings, L/R upper control arms with bushings, 2 tie rod ends, 2 ball joints, and the two sway bar links. The name of the seller is deutschepartsusa. The asking price is $349.00 for everything including the nuts and washers. I am wondering if anyone has purchased this kit from this seller and would comment on the quality of the parts as I am sure they are all aftermarket produced.I also plan on installing it all myself. I have seen a few DIY posts on this, and was wondering if anyone would like to share any tips or problems they may have had swapping all this stuff out. For the price it does not seem like you can go wrong if the quality of the parts are high. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

hmm...sounds like exactly what I need...just got the clunking noise at 88,000 miles...

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I would not buy non-OEM suspension pieces. It may seem mundane, but the exact deflection engineered into the oem bushings are very important to the handling. The components that are ok to use aftermarket parts, are the balljoints and tie-rod ends.

Why do you want to replace entire arms? Just get new oem bushings and whatever balljoints, and take the control arms to a machine shop. They'll charge you at most $20-30 to press all the old ones out and the new ones in.

Also, as far as the balljoints go: there's no point in replacing them if there's no play.

Are the ball joints removable? In a lot of cases, you have no choice. You must change the entire arm, the ball joints are not pressed, but welded.

The balljoint in the lateral lower control arm is fixed. There's no balljoint in the radius arm/tension strut. That one's balljoint is in the knuckle.

Still, it's extremely cheap to have a bushing pressed in, so if the balljoint in one of the lateral arms develops play, change the whole arm at that point. No point in spending an extra $60 now when a part is fine.

Btw, the radius arm is $160 v. $40 for just the bushing.

My only reasoning for changing all the parts is I really don't know which part is causing my clunking. I pulled really hard on the suspension parts, but could find no play in any. Tried that with the wheels on and off the ground. I saw that $349 including shipping bought everything, and I figured that if most of the suspension parts were going to wear out soon, then may as well change them all if it can be done cheaply. I may have more than one part bad as it is. However, if the quality of those aftermarket parts/bushings is poor, then going the non OEM route is out of the question.

I know someone who can press the bushings for me if I end up needing that. I may just start by replacing the strut links, and see if that fixes it. If not, then I guess its going to be a process of elimination!

According to the parts diagram, there is one ball joint that is not fixed. It looks like it plugs into the end of the tension strut, and is fully removable. Looks like there may be a fixed ball joint in the wishbone however. I keep reading that worn sway bars links are the primary reason for clunking in the front suspension while going over bumps at low speed. Do you agree with this?

The tension strut balljoint is actually pressed into the knuckle, so yes it's removable.

Yep, sway-bar endlinks are almost always the cause of 'clunks' in these vehicles. Have you checked yours?

Well, I have crawled under there and pulled on the sway links, and I can't feel any play. I suppose its kind of hard to check the bushings unless I pull them off, which I have not done as of yet. How often have you seen tension strut bushing, control arm and ball joint failures? My guess from what I have read is that the sway bar links are the sole problem most of the time. They are pretty inexpensive too. So I am just going to start there and change out the sway bar links. I won't have to have anything realigned after I swap them out, will I?