bmwe21.net forums

Hi all,

I'm replacing my front control arms and want to poly bush the new ones. All the new ones I've seen on ebay come with the bushings - it seems a bit pointless to buy new ones with bushings only to burn them out immediately.

Is there anywhere I can get the control arms with just the ball joint and no bushings?

Or

Can you just buy ball joints and press them in to the old arms.

Hi all,

Just revisiting this, I have done some googling an ebaying for a pair of new LCA for my e21. Australia doesnt seem to have any of these nor anyone make the bushes/ball joints.

Has anyone got a source for europe or US that is reliable?

Cheers, Ash

This is a huge business in Germany I order a lot of parts from, and if you choose the Febi-Bilstein ones you get affordable quality

https://www.buycarparts.co.uk/bmw/3-e21 ... agonal-arm

I see that shipping to Australia isn't cheap but if you put in a larger order (they really supply loads and loads of parts) it may still be worth while

Updating this, found these guys through a bloke I know who races an e21 in Australia. These guys are US based and to me anyway appear very reasonable pricing.

Eurometric
http://eurometric.com/?page_id=69#!/Sus ... ort=normal

At the top of the For Sale section there's a Suppliers List, also mentioned just a few lines above this thread in the sticky "All pls read: where can I find... (parts/services)" and Eurometric have been in there for ages. Trustworthy source.

So the dust covers to my ball joints have perished.
If i try to remove the arms to replace the rubber i fear it wont come out - last time i had to destroy the thread/nut by beating the life out of it to remove it .
Problem is as above the fitted ones at present are all poly bushed.
So can the ball joints be replaced separately or can you buy arms with no bushings - if not im in a world of pain.

Yeah they can be hell to remove, when I need to remove struts I usually leave the control arm attached, but in this case you want to undo the ball joint. Maybe you're lucky, sometimes hitting the solid metal parts hard and applying some heat will do the trick, otherwise they're up fro replacement indeed. Don't think you can buy them new without the bushings but the bushings are a lot easier to remove, worst case would also be applying some heat to tenderize the bushes.