im about to drop a few duckets on ball joints, tie rods, control arms ect. wondering if anyone has any input or personal experience on what brands to use and what brands to steer clear of. there are HUGE price differences ($4.95 vs $35 for a lower ball joint?!?!)
a lot of people (from what ive read) say just go with the moog problem solver line, but im looking for some input via personal experience
thanks guys
Moog and Timken for anything that Advance or equivalent would sell. I once bought a cheaper version of a wheel bearing and it was bad right out of the box, most deff. not even worth the hassle. Buy it right the first time and be done with it IMO.
Agreed. I’ve used moog ball joints with no issue. Along with timken wheel bearings.
Never had issues with Moog or Timkin. Worth the extra $$ IMO. Look on Amazon too for Moog parts; sometimes they can be cheaper than Rock if you factor in shipping. In my case with Prime shipping it was cheaper through Amazon for everything.
Note - When I just put all new parts on the Firebird a month or 2 ago, everything I installed was Moog. (Ball joints, upper and lower, rod ends, shock isolators, shock mounts, etc).
I’ve had good luck with the Raybestos Professional line in the past. Those can sometimes be cheaper picked up at your local CarQuest when you factor in shipping.
Advance has coupons that will save you a lot of money. They do sell moog parts.
Carquest sells moog. Take a print out of rockauto with prices. They normally will price match.
Moog for sure. If a customer has a bottom line budget I will use Dorman, but my choice would be Moog.
Good to get to know someone who has a shop. They’ll tell you what lines have high failure rates.
+1 more for Moog
I ended up buying all Moog “problem solver” parts. Around $500 all said and done, but do it correctly once, right?
You could go with cheap lifetime warranty parts from autozone and spend the rest of your lifetime replacing them every 6 months to a year.
And a lot replacing tires until the parts fail so bad you notice it. Or spend weekends replacing parts instead to driving. I have this discussion with customers a lot.
Do it right.
I’ve raced with moog parts - held up fine.
moog or OEM is that I found to work on my roadcourse SHO. Every time I would use a lesser part I would replace balljoints after every track day.
@Jam keep this updated with how your experience goes. I may be in the same boat come late summer for suspension bits.
Moog is great, used them before, never any issues, IMO when I do lower ball joints I usually replace the control arm with oem that already has the ball joint pressed in and bushings pressed in. I like to also cross reference part numbers to eBay, because sellers sometimes sell the parts at a discount since they get them in large quanties
I used Moog problem solver inner/outer tie rods, idler and pitman arms on my old Yukon. Put around 12k on them iirc and they were still solid when I sold the truck.
I used raybestos pro grade inner/outer tie rods on my old Mazda 6, after 10k they were still tight.
I bought the complete upper control arm, and pressed the lower ball joints in. Everything is on the car and I’m super happy with it, for the few miles I’ve put on the car
Awesome, where you get a alignment?
I have an alignment machine but no rack yet, so I take everything over to the Goodyear on Orchard Park Rd. Never had an issue.