Hi, was about to order the front radius arms and top and bottom wishbones for the front of the car, but baulked at nearly £1500 from bmw. My question is can I get ball joints for these if I polybush them, and I have read that if I order lemforder or Mahle replacements, that the ball joints aren’t the same. Any thoughts on this?

Edited February 13Feb 13 by Athey

Morning Gary

I am not aware of these Ball joints being available

I have a bearing press (Home made) so have refurbed quite a few suspension parts for E53 and E60 E70. Normally I have pressed out the old bushes and pressed in new, Lemforder and Mahle have been OEM suppliers and I have not had any issues with their bushes. If reusing the arm and ball joints, I take off the rubber boot wash out all the old grease and refill the joint fiddly but not difficult then fit a new rubber boot.

I have also changed upper and lower suspension arms on my own E70 and for ease and speed used a kit which had replacement arms all fitted without problem (note: BMW use a 12point ball joint locking nut most kits come with Nyloc nuts for the ball joint) as long as everything is torqued correctly no issues should occur. I would fit new inner bolts with either with threadloc or nyloc nuts (personal preference Nyloc) Again make sure everything is torqued correctly, the upper wishbones outer bolts score high on the cuss list if on your own 😁 If fitting bushes it is important to make sure the suspension is in it's loaded position before final tightening or premature failure will occur. Poly bushes allow rotation so this isn't necessary

A source of clonks is a fibre pad that is under the suspension top mount often missed, take look at www.realoem.com

Good Luck with the changes

Dave

The last time I did a dust boot on a ball joint was back in the 80’s! Been that long, that I’d totally forgotten about that. There’s no clunking or anything, am just doing a refresh of the chassis bushes due to the mileage. It’s going in for a gearbox service and new differential fluid at the end of the month, so I’ll get the garage to have a look and take it from there.

Morning Gary

Make sure the Garage understand your rear Diff has 3 chambers and 2 types of fluid, they may give you an old fashioned look but safety first Diffs aren't cheap 😁

Dave

I use a bmw specialist near me, very well known and reasonably priced unlike genuine bmw parts!

While the car was in the garage yesterday, I asked the tech to look at the suspension and all the arms.

He said it would be cheaper to replace the arms and wishbones with oem ones as the labour to do the bushes would be a fortune.

Im gonna change the springs and dampers anyway, and have already picked what Im getting, so will shop around and see what I can get the arms and wishbones for.

Morning Gary

I would agree that there is more labour in just changing bushes, but as I have my own bearing press in the garage that's less of a problem for me. Having said that I used a Meyle HD suspension kit (Front and Rear) on my E53 X5 4.6is (tip fit new mounting bolts as well your Garage probably will) everything fitted well. I marked the Eccentric bolts positions and put the new ones in the same position when it went for alignment very little was needed 😁 My E70 I have re-bushed the front suspension (again Meyle) Dampers are Bilstien, Springs are Original. I also fitted new Top Mounts

Enjoy your Beemer

Dave