Control Arms + Bushing - E46

BTW - my car is out of warranty (43K miles 4+ years) - I read in the other thread that if you complain to BMW, I might get a partial refund (as its low miles) as the part might be defective?

I have two problems here, 1.) is that you need bushings already. This is possible, but my gut feeling is that the bushings are not worn out already. I have a '94 E36 that I put 120k miles on in 4 years, and I had no trouble with the control arm pushings. These bushings doo need to be replaced, but I have to wonder if they need to be replaced at 43k miles, and 2.) $775 is very steep. You can buy the bushings for about $25, give or take, and lots of people put them in at home. One does need a press to make the job easy, but lots of guys take the lower control arm off and carry it down to a repair shop and pay the guys there $10 to press the old one off and the new one on. Some of us use a large hammer and a punch to extract the old part and set the new one. I don't think this job is 1.) necessary, and 2.) worth the cost.

Having said that, I would recommend staying at an independent BMW shop. Maybe you need an different shop ...

"Jeff Strickland" wrote

Well, Ron and his crew are pretty responsible and do good work. Given that, I'm also surprised that an '01 with relatively low miles in the mild Seattle climate would need replacing.

It's certainly not a problem you should be worried about if you continue driving it.

FloydR

Floyd, What sort of price tag should this job carry?

He gave a pretty grave warning and that scared me... "I wouldnt let anyone drive out with it, if u do, you need to sign this waiver - but this can cause a nasty accident"

anyway - i called bellevue BMW, and set up an appointment in 4 days - they quoted almost the same price ($780), so i figured they better take a look at it again.

wrote

Hmmm. Doesn't sound like Derek or Ron or the office manager... The price is probably *about* right, but can be done much more cheaply by buying the parts and doing them yourself or having a cheaper shop do the work.

I've shifted to Eastside Bavarian in Issaquah (because they're much closer - they opened a couple of years ago.) A couple of former Strictly BMW techs own/run the place, so I don't know if that's a good recommendation in this case. Auburn Foreign also has a good rep, but they're just as expensive (as my brother found out with his '94 325is.)

I don't know anything about the place behind the Factoria Mall. I've actually heard better things about BMW Seattle's service dept than Bellevue, YMMV. Although all my warranty work was done at Bellevue and I never had problems.

FloydR

It's probably a good idea to shop around. I agree with Jeff that there's no way that these part can be worn out at 43k unless you commute to work every day on a logging road. I drove a 318i to 340k miles and only replaced the control arms once at 160,000. The parts numbers are different on your car but they still have the same configuration. As far as the danger goes, I would think that your car would start to show some symptoms like a shimmy or vibration long before these parts came close to actually failing. If there is any significant wear in these joints the first symptom your car should develop is the tendancy to wander around in the lane whenever you encounter those "skiers ruts" on the freeway caused by the studded snow tires. Just my 2 cents.

The point that you missed is that they said the car needs control arms and bushings. Not just bushings. I'm guessing that is because the ball joints are shot. E46 cars cannot have the balljoints pressed in like (the much maligned) E36s. If I were springing for new control arms I would also replace the bushings. Just makes good sense.

Now as to being premature... I have seen balljoints last 100k miles. And I have seen them worn out in 15k miles. Especially if the car was operated with mis balanced or out of round wheels.

So, is it possible they are shot in 40k miles? Sure.

And that is all your opinion is worth... 2 cents.

It is extremely easy to determine if balljoints are worn or not. There is no subjectivity. If they are, and it is an E46 then the control arms need to be replaced. End of story.

The outer joints started to go on my wife's car at about 50K miles. The dealer (who knew he wouldn't do the work) tells me they typically last for somewhere between 40K and 80K miles on the E46.

I'd add that the control arms and bushings are over USD $500 alone (at

10% off list), and also that the job is a pain in the neck because the location of the inner ball joint shafts makes it difficult to get the required hex wrench where it needs to go. (Try a socket wrench with a *long* extension and universal joint on the left side.) It's definitely doable but allow more time than you think it should take to get it done. Say, double what you'd think it should take...and then a bit more. Take some ibuprofen first. ;-) Replacing the rear bushings, by contrast, is dead easy.

IIRC, someone (perhaps it's Bavarian Autosport) offers control arms at about half their cost from BMW. I don't know whether they are new or reconditioned, but for the cost difference I probably won't care when it comes time to do them again.

JRE

Generally, I would have agreed with you. But I have had some bad experience with Bavarian Auto and balljoints in particular. I brought my new to me (then) '95 325i to my indy for the once over and he found a few niggling things, but the one biggie was that someone had installed the outer balljoints wrong last go-around in the control arms. Since the car had ~85k miles I figured that the inners were probably going to need renewal sooner or later too, and rather than have new outers pressed into the original arms, I opted to buy new (remanufactured) arms from Bav Auto and put them in my self.

Fast forward 2 years and 15 k miles... (I don't drive this car all that much...) The handling was crappy and I had replaced the tie rods and put some different wheels and tires on, so I brought the car in for a full alignment. Before attempting that the shop found that the outer balljoints were completely shot again. I believe them because there was a suspicious clunking over bumps that felt like balljoints, but I was discounting because the control arms were only 15k miles old.

Well, this time I had the new BJs pressed in and after the full alignment the car is now handling better than ever since I've owned it.

But the question remains, what kind of crappy balljoints would wear out in 15 k miles? I'll be thinking twice about the parts I buy from BAS and sticking only to the new brand name stuff...

I was told my E46's bushings needed replacing at 60k miles. And no, there's nothing unusual about what I drive on.

would it be worthwhile to press BMW for warranty service?

I guess there's an arguing point there that if the ball joints are worn to the point of being dangerous at 43k that they must have been worn to the point of needing replacement at 36k. It may help your case with the dealer if you have the guy at Strictly BMW sign a statement confirming his opinion that the joints are worn to the point of rendering the car unsafe to drive.