P80 P2 Control Arm Quality - Great Video, not for the safety conscious

Post by **abscate** » 14 Feb 2019, 12:09

If you take car safety seriously, sit down for this one.

TerryJr caught this horrible video of a new Control arm from RockAuto on his/her XC90

Post by **ZionXIX** » 14 Feb 2019, 12:24

That's brand new?!

LOB · Post by **LOB** » 14 Feb 2019, 13:56

Why is the rear mounting-bushing of the control arm (the one with excessive movement) constructed for horisontal movement? On a P80 both mountings/bushings of the control arm are constructed for vertical movement. I don't get it....

dlundblad · Post by **dlundblad** » 14 Feb 2019, 14:50

Interesting. Isn’t it usually the vertical bushing that fails?

Post by **oragex** » 14 Feb 2019, 15:32

ZionXIX wrote: ↑14 Feb 2019, 12:24 That's brand new?!

No, I think the owner of the video did exaggerate a little, but on the cheap no name brands the rubber can fail very quickly, even after only a few weeks with normal driving. The rubber on suspension bushings is an art to manufacture properly in order to last. Cheap brands just throw in ordinary rubber that breaks in pieces after only a few hundreds miles (or even less!)

I think people fail a little to realize how much engineering it takes to make the rubber on a bushing last several years. There is a massive difference between a cheap rubber and a quality one.

The bushing that failed is the rear one on the front control arm, the one with the vertical bolt. The camera is looking towards the front of the car.

537playing · Post by **537playing** » 16 Feb 2019, 16:08

I agree that the control arm is bad but why bad mouth Rockauto if you don’t give us more details like the brand name and # of miles driven. The video should have also shown the arm removed showing the bad bushing.

Post by **scot850** » 16 Feb 2019, 17:35

I agree. I have had bad parts from several major suppliers and that includes Volvo. I only buy names I know from Rockauto that I know are OEM for that brand. So companies like Bosch, Denso, or also aftermarket brands I have used before like brake parts from Zimmerman, Akebono and others. The quality of parts is generally getting worse, even those in the famous blue boxes. Luck seems to be the name now. There is the other issue to that of who fitted the part and how that was done. Parts can (ahem!!) get damaged when installing (especially with the hammer applications!).

Neil.

Post by **Eddystone** » 17 Feb 2019, 20:55

I'm skeptical. There's no information about how long these have been installed or even if they were properly installed (as in tightening them up with weight on the wheels. I did control arms on an S60 once, and they were a pain in the a$$. One attachment point at the body is turned 90 degrees from the other, and that's very different from what is on the P80 cars. I am deathly afraid of any Chinese rubber parts because there is no QC and a desperate drive to make things cheaply or to a price that someone from another country picked out of the air. The Chinese are capable of turning out some pretty fine products at a low price like some of the guitars and ukuleles I own, but not auto motive rubber. I am MUCH less worried about parts coming from Taiwan than PDR of China.

I try to save a buck here and there because I need to. When I did the control arms and tie rod ends on my 98 V70, I used Moog and TRW parts, and I think they were pretty good quality. If this guy paid $15 for a control arm and had some neighbor throw them in, he deserves what he got. You need to have common sense. I think I need a new MAF sensor, and the prevailing opinion is that anything other than Volvo or Bosch will be a waste of money. However, I have seen Bosch MAFs selling for way less than some people are asking for them. It's up to me to make sure it's the real thing and the exact part I need.

WhatAmIDoing · Post by **WhatAmIDoing** » 18 Feb 2019, 21:40

You have to be careful even buying "good" brands. There's so many fakes coming from China and companies changing hands all the time. When buying Bosch parts these days it feels like you are rolling the dice as to whether they are knock offs or not.

The old saying "If it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't" really comes to play when buying cheap car parts.

Post by **abscate** » 19 Feb 2019, 01:49

There's an ugly contamination scenario of the supply chain in your local parts store that works like this.

Customer buys expensive OEM part from parts store
Installs it
Buys cheap crap off eBay.
Returns cheap part to auto store in OEM box for credit
Store puts cheap one backing stock.
You buy cheap one at OEM price

Ugly