| |I've priced these brands for a center link for my daily driver Chevy Caprice |V8. The best deal, I think, is a CarQuest CL for $45 with a lifetime warranty. |There is a Perfect Circle at AutoZone for $42 with a 1 year warranty, and a |Rare Parts CL for $69. Strauss Discount Auto has Chassis Select CL for $49 . |Advance Auto has TRW for $54 with a lifetime warranty. | |The CarQuest center link is at National Auto, and they say it is the "knockoff" |brand of Moog. | |Are these aftermarket brands all about the same ?
Almost all of these are re-boxed, most are "2nd lines". TRW may still be a primary manufacturer, but I'm not sure these days. "Knockoff of Moog" is pretty funny actually. Moog makes virtually nothing, but rather buys and boxes. Walk down the shelf of a Moog inventory and note all the countries of origin. The biggest difference is that I do not believe they use Chinese goods. These days that's more of a political issue than a quality one. Having said that, almost any of these will be as good as what came on your car. Big differences are forged steel vs cast steel, at least on the items I have bought for my own use. The cast looks more impressive, but it has to be bigger because the material is not as strong. Tap it with a hammer and then repeat on the OE part, and you can hear the difference. I recently needed an idler arm for an early RX7 race car. Bought a new Moog, and discovered it was much beefier - and twice as heavy - as original. It was cast vs forged, so I rebuilt the original part for a lot less money and saved weight. We sell Moog and a private label out of Canada. Personally, I generally find the private label of better quality. Bottom line is there are no rules these days, nobody makes anything in their own plants. Don't let the ISO stuff fool you either, it's easy to meet the standards. If this is just a daily driver, I doubt that even the cheap stuff will fail in normal service. I'm pretty demanding of equipment, so I shop for the best I can get. Sometimes it takes some looking.
Hope this helps Rex in Fort Worth