did a title search in the w203 forum and found nothing....especially for tie rod. I'm guessing three letter words are too small. Afterwards, i checked all the stickies and found nothing regarding ball joints.

anyway, it feels as though my ball joints are wearing, seems the car drifts ever so slightly. i need an alignment and shocks, so i'm planning to get the tein basic coilovers. with 80,000 miles on my car i'm gonna do my tie rods as well. my audi, with a similar suspension, needed all four lower control arms replaced by 90K (one ball joint popped right out of the control arm). The uppers seem to last longer. However, my passat made it to 100K before needing all this done. What is the longevity of the w203 control arms? are there places that sell them as a kit?

 

The longetivity of the ball joints on the control arms depends on how the vehicle is driven. I changed both my lower control arms at 90K miles. The shocks were about dead at that mileage so I also installed Tein coilovers at the same time. I purchased the control arms (bushing and ball joints included) from autopartswarehouse.com

 

cool, thanx. they're damn expensive, hopefully i can find a full kit for similar pricing to the four lowers. they sell febi control arms, who also makes kits for the audi. pricing individually is similar and a kit for the audi is just under $500 for all arms, tie rod ends, and stabilizer links. maybe wishing thinking, but i'm gonna search around to see if anyone provides the equivilent for the c-class. if so, i'll share the knowledge.

edit: five minutes of google searching revealed a febi kit for $597.79. However, it doesn't look as though it includes all 8 arms.
http://www.mercedes-benz-parts-direct.com/epc-items.asp

 

outch!