WTF Front Brakes?!?

72bluNblu said

I wouldn’t necessarily count bushings and ball joints already installed as a plus in most cases anymore. The bushings will be standard bushings, not offset bushings, so I wouldn’t even use them to begin with if you’re running radials as you’ll want offset bushings to get a decent alignment with good positive caster. And then yeah, a lot of the low end ball joints out there right now are terrible.

Free isn’t a good price if you have to replace the parts and add labor to do it.

If they’re good parts awesome, but if you don’t know what you’re getting it’s a dice roll.

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Yeah, I would agree with this. In my case, I will be removing the bushings and installing the offset bushings I had already bought. I also bought new upper ball joints before I realized I needed control arms, but I'll probably just leave the ones pre-installed on the new arms and keep an eye on them. I hadn't yet bought lower ball joints so that was a bonus for me. Like the uppers, I'll use them and keep a close eye on them.

I'm not too worried about the labour, I can manage the ball joints myself. Something like bad replacement tie rods would piss me off because then I would have the pay someone to align the car. Parts quality is a dice roll with almost any brand these days, fingers crossed it works out for me.