Those who have lower control arms
 

After a little bit of searching I didn't really find any good comparisons or user reviews...

I was wondering what you all run and how you like them or don't like them. Right now my car is street use only with only a couple visits to the track a year. The only suspension mods I have are steeda sport springs and tokico hp (blues) shocks/struts. I am also getting some custom subframe connectors welded up this Friday.

Lets hear it!

All the boxed lower control arms are the same. Its boxed steel with a poly bushing there is no difference in those styles if you ask me.

I have lakewood lowers in my car and I tossed the quad shocks out. No more wheel hop and car hooks up better.

I have the Maximum Motorsports ones and they are very nice. Definitely hooks a lot better than without them.

The difference is bushing design. The problem w/ our cars is that the control arms don't move parallel w/ each other, so you need a bushing design that compensates for this. Hence why companies like MM, Currie, and GW have poly/spherical combos. For me, the MM piece is the best, though the others are good. Unless you plan on not driving the car often on the street or could care less for handling as the strip is your calling, than any boxed control arm w/ poly bushings will do. Though it would cheaper in that case to just put poly bushings in the stock arms and box them.

Maximum Motorsports.

Maximum Motorsports w/ poly bushing at the chassi end and spherical at the axel end. Also with the height adjusting spring perch and swaybar mount. Great pieces with top notch quality.

Thanks for the reply's guys. I'm thinking that I don't need adjustable lca's...basically MM and the other 2 brands listed above are the only brands that makes a non adjustable with spherical bushings? Also if I went with a set without spherical bushings it's just going to cause a rougher ride?

I just want to make sure I understand correctly.

A LCA with poly bushing will actually make for a smoother ride, but more bind. Spherical bushings transfer more NVH to through the car but do not cause bind.

As far as I know, Maximum Motorsports, Currie, and Global West are the only brands that make poly/spherical combos. The Curries are nice though since they use their Johnny Joint which is spherical joint surrounded by polyurethane to reduce NVH. Now, Griggs also sells such combo but their stuff seems more track oriented.

I totally agree, I'm saying that all the boxed ones with poly bushing are the same though so it doesn't matter who you get those from. Once you get into the more expensive ones that have different bushings and spherical bushing on one side, that's a different story.

I see, I thought you meant all of them in general. That's my fault for misunderstanding you and I totally agree w/ you on that.

I thought thats what happened no problems :).

I'm actully looking into replacing my Lakewood lowers and stock uppers with new ones with poly bushings on the car side and Spherical on the axle side with adjuster uppers so I can set the pinion angle down more for better traction. Problem is funds are very very low and I want them on the car by sometime this summer. I was looking at UPR parts, but lets be honest they have a bad reputation with customer service. The parts have a somewhat solid rep however. I know for a fact I will never put a GMS part on my car ever.

Has anyone seen the awesome quality of GMS parts for our cars?

Thanks again guys after looking into this some more and learning more about lca's I think I'm just going to get a set with poly bushings. I'll probably try out the lakewoods.

It is amazing. And not for a good reason. I swear in either the Summit or Jegs catalog they have a GMS section and they have pictures of Maximum Motorsports parts for GMS.

I have seen photos of their control arms broken in half and bent in half. And most of those are just from street cars and daily drivers. They make some junk parts. There is a huge thread on modulardepot.com about their shitty products.

Just don't go crazy in terms of street driving. Those arms will cause binding during body roll and on uneven road surfaces.

I was curious and looked that up and their parts are really shitty looking. I was even more amazed that the Granatelli vendor's responses. What an asshole! He kept denying that the parts were even his and kept blaming the failures of the parts on other things even after denying responsibility for the parts. I would never buy anything from them. It looks like pure shit.

That's because GMS are cheap copies of MM parts. They look the same, just minus the quality.

Yeah, but even more so, not even the poly bushing color was different. And the swaybar mount had the bent ends to provide stiffness IIRC, I didn't think GMS did that on thier LCAs.

Thanks for the warning...for the type of driving I do I think these will be just fine. I don't drive in any style that would cause much body roll basically regular day to day driving with a very occasional hard launch.

Even that can ruin some GMS parts. Its a roll of the dice everything you drive if you have GMS parts.

I'm not going with GMS...I'll probably be going with Lakewood.