well, i pulled the tracking info & apparently this thing delievered to my house on friday.......except that it didn't.

FCP is filing a claim w/ UPS. i'll follow up w/ them in a week.

I got mine today!

They look to be nice but I really have never seen any other ones to make a accurate comparison of their quality.

Hoping once you get yours insite you can fill me in on there quality!

we found mine yesterday. some kids stole some boxes off my porch. turns out that they don't have a porsche & they don't read books. they ditched the boxes behind my neighbor's air conditioners.....

anyway, the part looks good. went on nice & easy. the casting is basically stock, but they seem to have added a little bit of material near the ball joint. i will post photos this weekend.

I see people knocking these FCP/ODI control arms really bad on other BMW/VW fourms saying "they only last like 3k miles and fail" .......... By looking at them do you think the wearable parts are pretty decent quality or would it be a better idea to leave semi worn original ones with 60K on them on the car???

Any info on these before I install them?

don't read too much into it, but i needed a control arm (the ball was worn and jiggling) for ~15k miles. it wasn't any worse than it originally was when i replaced it.

Hey Insite, speaking of questionable castings any insite on the alloy used to make M96 engine parts like case, heads,cam covers? Having a hard time finding the best solution for cleaning parts without turning dark grey.

have you tried phosphoric acid? i recommend alumiprep 33 (available from aircraft spruce). usually, it provides a nice, bright finish.

now, i HAVE noticed with certain parts that cleaning w/ alumiprep leaves the parts grey. as best i can GUESS, porsche has applied some type of anodizing to the block to help resist corrosion. in that case, mild acid treatment will leave a surface coating of antimony, which is grey.

the antimony can be removed with nitric acid (hard to get). alternatively, and i have not tried this, you can use a mixture of phosphoric & chromic acid. keep in mind these things are a little nasty.

once you've done this, any anodization will have been removed. bare aluminum WILL corrode. you can either re-anodize OR use an alodine process, which will leave a nice looking golden finish on the part. i'm getting ready to make some more drop links this week; i'll take photos of the process if you want.

the final alternative is to steam clean the parts. this should leave a nice finish without altering the anodization / surface treatments. it won't be as pretty as bare aluminum, but it may suffice.

any word on the quality of the wearable parts on these cheap control arms?

Good god, man. You've asked the Same question like fifteen times. Install them and be done with it. Report back to us.