Does the panel have any views on the quality of pattern part brands, as opposed to OEM.
Following last years MOT in July i noticed the usuall knocking of a bottom arm knackard ball joint, so i toddled of to the local motorfactors (General Traffic) and aquired myself a new one, and fitted it with some swear words. I suspect the one i took off was the original of 2003 vintage and Circa
120k.
Now 15k later it's goosed again.
Whilst i appricaite that you always get a 'bad un' every now and again, i am of the view that id rather spend a little more for quality and have it last.
Any views on pattern parts/brands to avoid or is OEM worth the extra expense.
IIRC the one i bought looked suspiciously like this one.... Down to the nylocks and polybag.
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Links to reputable online suppliers would be good too.
Vehicle is Vaux Combo Van 2003 so Autovaux will be my first port of call.
I had a similar issue, but on a Pug 206 HDI 2001 with 90k miles two years ago.
one year, the car failed its MOT as the rubber bushes had worked loose in both front wishbones/track control arms. it is stressed that the ball joints were absolutely fine.
I had two choices:
take car off road, take both lower front wishbones off, take them to a garage and have two new bushes fitted to each wishbone. Then re-fit the re-bushed wishbones back onto the car. This would have cost me £40 for the 4 new bushes plus an hour of a garage's time to remove old bushes and press in the new bushes with a hydraulic press and loss of use of said car for a few days.
buy a new set of front wishbones and fit them myself. Pug dealer wanted over £300 quid for a matching pair. The cheapest I could find was Eurocarparts, £140 for a pair.
So I bought the Eurocarparts Wishbones and fitted them. These were OEM parts, not third party pattern parts.
About 6 months ago with the car having done a further 45K miles over 3 years (and passing MOT every year), I was turning left at a junction. As I came out of the junction, the steering went heavy and there was this loud scraping noise.
I performed an emergency stop and inspected the car. The front offside wheel was at right angles to the car, wedged up into the wheel arch. Only the steering rod, upper suspension strut and hydraulic brake hose was keeping the wheel, hub, brake disc/caliper attached to the car.
After recovery by the AA back to my house, At inspection, I found that the ball joint that is bolted to the hub carrier's bottom had popped out of the lower wishbone's balljoint socket, and the driveshaft had been forcibly pulled out of the hob and was hanging off the gear box and strained/stretched the brake hose.
I got a new wishbone from GSF for £30 quid, fitted it myself along with a new brake hose, a new CV joint gaiter kit and new driveshaft circlip.
So far, so good. I must emphasise that I do check my ball joints at every
12K service, and there was no evidence of free play in the affected ball joint 6,000 miles prior to the ball joint failing.
The AA man tells me he sees failed ball joints every day, apparently years ago, there used to be greasing nipples on all ball joints and it was refilled with a greasing gun with new fresh grease which would force out the old grease at regular intervals. So ball joints are not lasting as long as they used to.
I always buy OEM-quality bits after spending time fitting a cheap CV only to find the hub nut thread wasn't cut properly, so I had to take it all apart again. The price difference isn't that large.
There's varying levels of quality from motor factors from "Get you through an MOT mate and then sell the car" through to ones better than OEM. You get what you pay for.
Whipped the wheel off last night to have a closer look, and it seems that whilst one of the lower ball joints rubber has split it seems okay (but will be replaced) both Anti-roll rod link bars are utterly fubar, despite being replaced in October in an attempt to cure a knocking then.
Both have suffered the same failure mode of the rubber dropping to bits and the ball is goosed, feels like a dick in a bucket.
Vauxhall run something called the trade club, certain parts are extra cheap.
they supply a book of all the parts on that system.
that part for yours is #90496116 retail 15.80 plus trade 14.23 plus and trade club 11.85 plus although it is probably slightly more than that as the book I looked in is last years, I can't see any newer one though it might have been tidied away !!
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