caverman

I'm looking at replacing my front inner/outer tie rods, bellows boot, and ball joints. Found some DIY videos from 1A Auto and of course they sell the parts. They are a good price as well so I'm wondering if anyone has used them before with good or bad results.

TrueGS300

They are a decent brand. I don't think you'd have any regrets or worries.

jettate

I saw the whole front end kit and it came with 10 parts, I wondered the same thing, is this any good. Price was around 140. Ended up only needing one UCA and went with Mevotech.

caverman

Well, guess I'm going to find out. I ordered the kit that has new inner/outer tie rods, bellows boots, and ball joints. I just got them yesterday and from what I can see they seem to be decent quality. I watched a DIY video on doing the ball joints and on one of them the guy was using OEM and explaining all the bad things about the cheap parts he was taking off. Things like the actual ball joint and out tie rod ends being able to be moved easily and how the grease boots didn't fit very well causing grease to come out. So far these parts don't seem to have any of that but we will just have to see when it's all done. My kit was only $85 and that's about the cost of a single OEM ball joint. No doubt OEM would be better but I'm trying to be money conscious with a car that has almost 190k on it. I also just had to spend some money getting the cam seals replaced and the vvti gear rebuilt with new seals to stop the oil leaks and this all just started because I noticed one of my bellows boots has a tear and not that the actual tie rods or ball joints seem to be bad. I'm just replacing all of that because I'm there dealing with the bellows boot and I've heard bad things about the ball joints. Hope to have the time to get it all done next week.

caverman

Here is my update now that I installed everything last night. All in all they seem to be a decent parts especially for the price. The only few issues I'm not crazy about but not a huge deal are first the fact that they are made in China but can't expect much for the price point. Second is that the ball joints don't have a service point for more grease. In other words the you can't add grease in the future so I doubt they would make it to 100k+ but with 185k on my car I doubt it will make it that far anyway. Third is that the castle nuts are a larger size than OEM, no big deal they are just one size up (ex: 18mm vs 17mm of OEM). Time will tell how well they will hold up but honestly it will be a much quicker and easier job in the future if I have to replace them for some reason. Other than that they were everything I expected and fit just fine with all the correct parts/accessories. At this point I would still buy them again for the price and for the plans I have with the car but if they go bad while I own the car I'll come back and make an update.

After I left the shop where I installed them I thought I should have probably taken a couple pictures of the installed parts but I didn't. What I did take a picture of is how bad my passenger side parts were. Based on the fact that the boots still had the OEM clamps and how bad one looked I have to assume these were the original parts with 185k miles on them. The driver's side was in descent shape and if both sides were the same then I wouldn't have replaced the parts. However, the passenger side was gone. Can't believe the car rode and steered as well as it did. Take a look at all the holes and deterioration that was on the boot. Ignore the bottom side of the boot because I just cut the boot off due to how stuck the tie rod jam nut was on there but look at all the holes in the top were there. That allowed water into the inner tie rod and it was really worn and the was barely any grease left.

Glad I replaced the parts and the car goes in for an alignment tomorrow.