I need a few parts for my car to renew the suspension. Usually one would be able to just press out the bushes and ball joints and replace them, and while it’s possible to do the bushes, the ball joints are not replaceable and require new upper and lower control arms.

I sourced a kit of parts a few months back from the US, but haven’t yet got around to installing them, From memory the entire kit, which consisted of two lower control arms, two upper control arms, two tie rods, two stabiliser bar linkages and two rear stabiliser linkages cot me a total of around NZ$400. Local prices had just ONE lower control arm costing more than the entire kit cost.

I also decided to renew the stabiliser bar bushes. Four are required as each one is effectively half a bushing. I sourced these from Ireland, Febi parts which are OEM. Each one cost me about NZ$ 5.00. The price at a local dealer is around NZ$ 30.00 each.

On reading up the manufacturers procedures for replacing the suspension components I realised I would have to fit some new bolts as they are Torque-To-Yield, not Torque-To-Spec, and new nuts as they are one-shot lock nuts. I’d also need to replace the clamps for the tie rod boots, and I decided to replace the boots as well due to the mileage of the car (One of the “clunk” culprits is a badly worn inner tie rod ball joint). I got all the part numbers and contacted the local dealers for prices. NZ$ 342 was the total. I got on to an overseas dealer to get a quote and wasn’t too surprised to found out that all of the same parts, plus shipping was immensely cheaper – NZ$ 265.

The long and short of it is that we are being ripped off on a daily basis by importers who have almost no domestic competition, so they cream huge markups. They are crying because the internet has opened up a literal world of possibilities to the NZ consumer. I am quite happy to bypass them and order whatever I need from overseas, and screw them.

I’ll document the replacement of the suspension components here when the last parts arrive and I get the job done