Ball Joints need replaced

[Sean0629]

Recently I had a new muffler put on my '88 325. The Midas man told me that my ball joints need replaced. I understand that the ball joints can't be replaced on this car, but rather the entire support arms.
Any one have experience with this? Is this something I could do myself? Expensive, cheap? Any good place to get the parts inexpensively?
Thanks.

 

[Inline_6]

Hello Sean,
I looked through past threads & couldn't find an earlier discussion about lower ball joints. You can replace just the ball joint but it's a pain. As inexpensive as the whole arm is, it's best to just buy the whole arm & save yourself a lot of extra work. Pelican parts, The Parts Bin.com, Bavarian. There is a list of good parts suppliers back a few discussions. Do a little shopping. I bought the forged aluminum lower control arms, about half the weight as the iron ones & twice the price. My car had been good to me so I had to be good to it, what can I say.....

 

[rjp325i]

I agree with Inline_6. The additional machine shop labor for press fitting the new ball joint wipes out the savings. If you are going to replace the control arms why not change the control arm bushings at the same time? They may need replacing anyway. A worthwhile upgrade, would be to use the offset control arm bushings that were used on the E30 M3s.

 

[junglestylz]

I just got done changing out the control arms, and bushings from Chris's M3 into my car. All in all, It wasn't that hard. The offset control arms bushings are way better that the original straight ones.