I had my front suspension off and figured I might as well clean things up and replace the upper and lower control arm bushings with energy suspension. Figured I’d save time and take them to a shop to have them pressed out. The damage was $200 (wtf) for 8 bushings and this:
(This is just some of the damage)
It literally looks like a monkey took a hammer to 'em on the inside. So much for saving me time… I ended up dremeling the edges down on the insides and outside surfaces and now I’m thinking I should jb weld the gouges/scratches. Anyone with experience installing ES bushings have any advice, should I bother with JB weld?
you my friend got ripped off, i just did mine cleaner than that with 2 sockets and a hammer, yea it took awhile but it was done rite, a mechanic near me was gonna charge $150 to do the ES bushings on the ENTIRE car…unless your in like NY or CA where labor rates is like $80 an hour…as for the scratches i dont think you need to worry about putting JB weld in there
why not source out new/used arms from the wrecking yard.
also if they hammered the arm then if could of bent it a bit, your going to have axle issues later on.
whether your leaking trans fluid from the driver side or the axle may slip out and cause mayhem.
Ah well these 2 control arms are newly sourced since I found out that both of mine were bent to varying degrees so I was especially unhappy with the damage they did since I had just parted them! Ended up JB welding the gouges so it should be fine when I put it back on the car, so thanks for the advice. Won’t be going back to the shop again, should never had them do it at hourly rates too or at all for that matter!
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the damage pictured, and actually it’s quite minor. You did pay more than you should have, but don’t worry about the scratches you see. They won’t affect the structural integrity of the arms at all. I have much larger gouges in mine due to my ghetto removal techniques and they’ve been fine for years, and now I’m tracking the car on a regular basis - if they can handle that abuse, then any sort of daily driving will be a piece of cake.
(This is just some of the damage)