Control arm replacement intervals

[mrdave]

Obviously the front upper control arms need to be replaced the most often, tons of info on these. But what about the front lowers? Same time as the uppers? Less often?

And the rear? I haven't been able to find any information on rear control arms, other than they're not too cheap.

[DHall1]

80k
Replaced uppers at 44k

Everything tight

No potholes in AZ

[4.2Crew]

Dave, We drive on similar MN roads... After putting 200k+ miles in a 2001 AL 4.2L, I replaced the lowers once in that time frame. On the RS6, the lowers are still original after 90k+ miles. In the past (on all the Audis owned) I'd replace the uppers as a set, now they're replaced individually as needed. YMMV.

[Bigglezworth]

Straight forward math on this one. Upper fronts are changed out 2-3 times as often as the lower fronts (i.e. 40-50K max for uppers usually, 100-125K for lowers as an average). Rears have entirely different loads applied to them since the wheel is fixed as compared to the front. This greatly lengthens the lifespan of the bushings for the rear bars. The reason why they are so expensive is that they rarely if ever get changed... My one car here had 240K on it and was a documented car. It had 5 different sets of upper front controls arms on it over the years. 2 sets of lower fronts, and had never had the rears changed once.

[mrdave]

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks guys!