D3 lower arm bushes

[reb78]

Hi Folks - following on from one of my other posts, the D3 needed new lower arms (well, the bushes at least). A bit disillusioned with the Meyle HD arms lasting only 4-5 years, I bought Lemforder ones from Autodoc. Along with the good prices, came snail pace postage and poor packaging. The state of the packaging made me open the pack and look closely at the arms for any damage. They look ok, but I noticed that the large rear lower bushes looked to be pressed into the arms different distances. Both front bushes were pressed fully in. Has anyone fitted new bushes and how critical is this?

On an old set of arms, the distance between the front and rear bush centres was 453.5mm. This is the same as on both of these new arms, but the large rear bush on one is pushed in 3mm further than the other side - is it the distance that's critical between these bushes to take up manufacturing tolerance in the metal arm itself?

Some pics might help explain

The red line is the space i measured (from the flat inner face of each bush centre) - this is the same on both arms at 453.5mm

Click image to enlarge

But the large rear bushes are pushed into each arm a different distance - one is 3mm further in than the other measuring the gap from the edge of the bush to the hole in the arm

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

The other thing of note is a fair amount of welding spatter on the arms and poor paint coverage generally.

Would you happily fit these?

 

[Ubique]

I'd reject them, the rear bushes should be fully inserted so that the arms fit the chassis without pre-loading the bushes if you have to force them in. They also look like poor copies, especially due to the lack of paint adhesion, weld spatter isn't too bad, I've seen genuine arms worse than that...
I've known of Autodoc to not always supply the item ordered, sometimes substituting with a similar, but cheaper item.
Are there any markings on the ball joints? that should give you an idea of the quality.

If they say 'can't you just push the bushes in?' reply 'with what?' pointing out that you neither have a suitable press or the mandated special tooling.

 

[Blobber]

They do look a bit rubbish to be fair, send them back

 

[reb78]

They came in sealed bags with lemforder labels on them but I dont know what reassurance that is. The ball joints have some small numbers on the rubbers but nothing that says Lemforder.

I dug out the original arms from the back of the shed and even those bushes weren't fully inserted which made me wonder if this was correct after initially questioning it.

Bloody thing. I have waited 7 days for these to arrive and the d3 has sat on the ramp all that time. We need two cars next week as i am working away.

 

[reb78]

Oh. And just in case anyone else is looking at a later date. My red line measurement above was wrong. I got 403.5mm, not the 453.5 I incorrectly wrote above. Searching tonight I found the official figure is 404mm

 

[Erie Fred]

I had to design a fixture to fix a similar problem.
and yes, regardless of the outer (in my case a rough casting) we needed to hold the 2 bushings
at a set distance between them.
I see similar in your case, however I don't know what else is critical on your parts.