chynatown

Hello,

Just had my car at the dealership as there was a knocking noise coming from the front end. My car only has 44,000KMS on it and I was told that it needs new sway bar links/bushings because my car is lowered. They want to charge me $1200 CAD to do this job……..lol. Can lowering a car affect the links?

Thanks,

MartinC2S

Depending on how much you've lowered it. If it's just a bit then it probably won't have much of an impact on their endlinks longevity but if you've lowered it by more than a few cms then their life will defnitely be reduced. The stock end-links are sized length-wise for stock ride height and reducing (or increasing for that matter) the ride height will then put additional stress on the wobbly bits of the endlinks. Once you've gone past a certain point in lowering you eithr need to get adjustable end-links or shorter ones. I'm not sure what's available for the C43 though. Here's an example. You could just replace the current ones with stock ones but you'll likely run into the same issue in another 40k kms.

As for the sway bar bushings, there's no reason I can see for those requiring replacement. My guess is that's just typical $tealership practice for trying to empty your wallet.

Replacing the endlinks is a 30 minute job. All you need is a ramp, a couple of appropraitely sized wrenches and then a torque wrench for tightening the new ones. It's easiest to do when the suspension is fully loaded rather than with the car up on jack stands.