Control Arms

[Kool-Aid]

How do you know if your upper or lower control arms are bad?

[pdiggitydogg]

9 tmes out of 10 the arms are fine (unless theyre bent)
its the bushings and ball joints that go bad

Do you think somethings wrong?

[thermal]

^^I agree. Maybe all you need is an alignment

[Kool-Aid]

Ok...well, I've got the alignment, because when I would go about 85-90 MPH...my steering wheel would wobble from side to side as if I was going to lose control if I didn't hold it still...so I thought maybe it was the control arms or something with my suspension...well, I got new tires and the steering wheel centered and the wobbling stopped but it still pulls to the right because since my car is lowered, they couldn't do a thorough job...so they say

[ebpda9]

hmm that wobble i am sure it comes from an unbalanced tire.

[Kool-Aid]

Yea, the wobbling is gone but the car still pulls to the right. But why can't they fix that just because my car is lowered?

[95DX]

from what I've heard fwd vehicles are set up to do that (I notice it with my car and I havn't touched my sus. yet but I didn't notice it as much with my stock wheels compaired to my 17s) being lowered should have nothing to do with them being able to correcting it if they say it does they are most likely feeding you some bull sh-t unless they can't correct it enough then you would have to get a camber kit to fully correct it. it could be your tires and if that doesn't work then maybe either try another place for your alignment or find out whats wrong specificly and if you don't know if its really possible then ask around (unfortunately some mechanics will take advantage of women since many don't know much if anything about cars)

[Kool-Aid]

Well, I don't know shit about suspension...I can tell you that much...but I found it weird that he told me that the reason why he couldn't fully correct my car was becuse of it being lowered...

[95DX]

if it were me I probably would have asked something along the lines of what is it thats preventing it not to be fully corrected but you may need a camber kit. through ebay they were from $5-$120 but I don't know too much about them. I'd concider a name brand versis no name since their rep would be on the line that they wouldn't want to have messed with

[Kool-Aid]

Yea, I should have asked him why eing lowered had anything to do with it correcting it...but I was ready to get home...but my suspension is ok though...it's not bad...
What about the ball joints? How would you know if those were bad?

[95DX]

its kinda hard to explain but if you hear anything unusual in your front end have it checked out asap (I used to have a 280z and was told I was lucky if I had hit one more dip/speed bump at a reasonable speed one of my ball joints would have totaly gone out on me)

[Kool-Aid]

Well, it's kind of hard to explain the noise, but I will definately go get it checked out anyway...but I do hear some noises...not loud ones...but noticeable ones...

[ebpda9]

like thums and stuff ? that's a bad balljoint. as for them not being able to align bring the car to specs because it is lowered they are most likely refering to the camber issue. that is not adhustable on the stock hardware on a honda.