Control arm replacement

[otty]

Hello all. I began getting a ka-thunk noise and feeling while braking from time to time. My mechanic found nothing wrong with the brakes but that one of the control arms was coming loose and needs replacing.

Having looked around at the price of individual control arms I decided to just go with this kit - http://shopping.boraparts.com/product_info.php?products_id=1329
way cheaper than oem parts and a great deal compared to the individual arms. Turns out it is a eurospecsport product - http://eurospecsport.com/products/suspension/index2.htm

My question now is economically and labour-wise is it a good idea to swap out the entire control arm set or just replace the one arm. My mechanic is saying it could be 6+ hours to do the whole set and about 3 for just the one failing arm. How likely is it that I will need to do the whole set soon anyways?

My car has 160K kms (supposedly but I have my suspicions it was wound back).

Thanks!

 

[Seatman]

The lower arms only take an hour or so, changed quite a few of them, the top takes longer because there's a long bolt that holds both ball joints from the two arms and it's always seized solid, always.

I'd be more inclined to just replace both lowers for now then think about the upper ones later, they don't seem to wear out as fast, maybe don't take quite as much of a beating.

But yeh, the lowers are fairly easy to do and shouldn't take more than a couple of hours all in.

 

[bbob203]

I was diligent and patient with my top bolt and it came out. Lots of heat tapping and more heat.