Intrigue Control Arms

christauph

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Does anyone know if control arms for the Grand Prix or Regal will fit on an Intrigue? There is a huge difference in price and selection, but I don't want to end up with something that doesn't fit. Has anyone tried this? Thanks!

-Chris
 
Rockauto.com shows a picture of a control arm for the Grand Prix but doesn't for the Intrigue; my best guess would be that they are not interchangable.
 
Yeah, Rock Auto is where I was checking. It seems that they are interchangeable for EVERY 2nd gen W-body but the Intrigue. But when I asked Mike at W-body.com about their "performance" control arms for the Grand Prix, he said they would work for the Intrigue as well. Confused.
 
Why do you need to replace the control arm, the ball joint and front vertical bushing are replaceable.

Do you mean to say sway bar?
 
I meant the control arm. By the time I've ground off the rivet heads to get the ball joint off and paid a machine shop to press in a new bushing, I might as well have bought a whole new arm with TWO new bushings instead of just one. That is, if I could use the cheaper ones ($50 a pop) for the Regal/GP/Impala, et. all. If I have to spend $120 a pop on the "Intrigue only" arms, I'll go the first route.

On another note, anyone know if the rear bushing is REALLY not replaceable? They sell individual replacements, and I can't imagine a machine shop would have much trouble getting the old one out and pressing in a new one.
 
If you go the first route, these pictures might help you:

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Thanks! Those are definitely helpful. So you just hammered the front bushing in, huh? How did you get the old one out?
 
Thanks! Those are definitely helpful. So you just hammered the front bushing in, huh? How did you get the old one out?

You're welcome. Yes, hammered right in, took a good 5 minutes of hammering, but went in fine. Cut the rubber insert out of the way. Then Cut two slots, without damaging the outer parts... then a hammer and punch to bend it inwards... pretty fast and easy after you do one of them. Like this....

(Wish I had picture examples before tackling this job too :D , which is why I took them.)

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Other side, only needed one slice and punch it out...

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Either worked good.

The vice was VERY helpful, if not required, doing all that work + ball joints.

Also, used a light wire wheel to clean up the inside/edges before hammering in the new one.
 
Thanks again, the pictures are great! I have all those tools, so I should be able to do it. I was thinking of picking up a $15 air chisel to get the ball joints off, looks like it might help with the bushings as well.
 
Sure!

On the ball joint rivets, I found the rivets to be aluminum soft, so drill them first. The stock ones have a divot on the head to help align your drill bit. I started small then got bigger. After the pilot were drilled, used a cutoff wheel and angle grinder to the head of the rivets. Note, did not drill all the way through, just near the bottom and hammer punched them the rest of the way out.

The hand chisel used on the bushings was very easy at that point, barely needed to tap it with a hammer since all the stress was relieved from the cutting.
 
I finally got around to doing this, though it was kind of by accident. I had decided to hold off on doing the control arm stuff since the bushing and ball joint still looked okay, but I needed to remove the ball joint from the knuckle to get the axle out and change the inner CV boot. In doing so, I ripped the boot on the ball joint. So I had to replace that and figured I might as well do the front bushing while I was at it.

A couple pieces of advice:

When drilling out the rivets on the ball joint, you'll need to go pretty big on the drill bit size, and drill clean through one side of it (not the bottom, you'll want to have that in tact in order to punch it out, as JustinTime noted earlier) before it'll budge. With even a millimeter or two remaining all around, I couldn't get it to budge much. I experienced this on not one but two control arms, find out why down below.

When installing the control arm back on the car, be REALLY careful not to scrape the ball joint on the knuckle. I did, and ripped the boot. Oops, good thing I had two. Also, angle the joint forward (toward the car) and it'll be a lot easier to slide into the knuckle.

Pay attention to where the bushing ends and the control arm begins. I thought there were two lips of metal on the bushing. There were not. I cut clean through the ring of metal on the control arm that holds the bushing. The new bushing went in fine, but with the integrity of the metal ring compromised, I figured it was only a matter of time before the bushing worked itself out. So off to the junk yard to pick up a new used control arm, where I answered the question I started this thread with. A control arm from a Regal, Grand Prix or Century is identical, despite the difference in part numbers on RockAuto. I got one from a 2000 GP GTP, and there is no difference. Hope this helps someone else in the future. Thanks to JustinTime for the original tips and photos for doing this, they helped immensely.
 
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