kjcole

Time for me to replace the upper control arms in the front. Car is bone stock. Tire wear has been great so I don't need to add camber adjustment, etc. I'll do the work myself.

OEM is pricey but I'll go that direction if need be. The question is how do people feel about the quality of the typical aftermarket companies (Moog, Mevotech, Dorman, ACDelco, etc). The prices on-line range from ridiculously low (under $50) to $200 a piece, and of course higher for OEM. I don't want to spend $150 on a Mevotech control arm/ball joint, and then regret not popping for a Lexus OEM part. I'm not considering the ultra-cheap control arms.

416tt

iTrader: (1)

I have moog control arms/ball joints/tie rods/swaylinks for front and mevotech sway link for rear.

Both brands are actually really good quality, mine are holding up really really well! just my lower ball joints have seemed to have rusted a little but the ball joint itself is super solid still after a year now.

as for the rear sway link by mevotech, I posted a pic in this thread:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sc4...ay-bar-11.html

sc430faste

Stay away from the chinese no name ones. Moog aftermarket is good, raybestos , etc are good. But the no name ebay ones are crap ... I had ball joints from ebay which were really cheap but only lasted about 10k miles before they started making noise ... not worth having to reinstall them (cost more time/money to reinstall)

kjcole

Thanks everyone. Moog or Mevotech will save me over $300 per side compared to OEM.

Lexus dealer is doing my airbag recall and calls yesterday to say the ball joint at the upper control arm (driver side) is getting sloppy and they'll be happy to replace it for $1200. Uh no thanks, I'll do both sides myself for $400 and some dirty fingernails, and while I'm under there I'll throw in new steering rack bushings too.

sc430faste

Don't forget to do your outer tie rod while you already in there. Once the upper / ball joint start to go, the tie rods gonna go soon after. I just did all these last year. Common with sc430 around 80-100k miles

kjcole

Thanks for the advice on the tie rod ends. Will do. I've paid for lifetime free alignments for this car at Firestone some time back (for $75!!). How does that lower control arm hold up? Should I just do it all? Front sway bar bushings too??

sc430faste

Thats perfect ! Wish I got life time allignment for my car before I did it haha. I did replace the lower control arms as well but they didn't need replacing. I did it all, upper control arm ,lower control arm, inner tie rod, outer tie rod, ball joints. The lower control arms were ok but I replaced them anyways since they were only $75 a piece from advance auto parts. I didn't do the sway bar bushings though or bar end links. The car felt like new afterwards and didn't feel like it was all over the road when there were bumps.

I had to do the ball joints again last year because the chinese part off ebay wore out. It is pretty easy, just rent the ball joint tool fro autozone/advance auto parts. The hardest part was getting off the bolts (need airtool or a BIG breaker bar).

This year my castor arm started making noise, this is probably the most expensive single suspension part in the front and there are no aftermarket options. The lexus part is $250 a side. I am waiting for a good day to do these.

You will be surprised how the car feels with new suspension components, it is like night and day. Only thing I can compare it to is like driving a new car off the lot .. it will be smooth and drive straight haha. Anyways let me know any problems you run into, I didn't do the inner tie rods myself as mine were stuck and I had to bring it to a shop, but the rest of them I did do myself and were not too bad

416tt

iTrader: (1)

I would definitely do the whole front end.. not sure how much mileage your SC has but would definitely be worth getting it all out of the way once .. I find that sometimes If you replace a piece here and there, because there is still old wearable parts, they make the newer ones bad quicker.

BTW who ever your buying from I would ask them for a package deal sway links, tie rods, CA's, etc...

kuWuPt

iTrader: (13)

I would recommend doing the inner tie rods as well, makes a huge difference. For the castor arms, I feel like if you are not going to lower the car etc there is no replacement to the oem arm, as far as comfort level goes. I look at that as a wear and tear item that needs to be replaced every 40k miles. For a more long term solution I used and highly recommend figs engineering press in bushings, I love it!! I've used all their bushings on all my cars, past and present. Here is a link to my post when I did my front end suspension components, hope it helps.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sc4...ml#post8862415