Dorman lower arms are junk. Buy oem or nothing.

I was in there to change an aftermarket axle that was junk and found both my lower arms with 500miles on them broken at the shock mount tabs. After buying oem to replace them with I did the hammer test on the mount tabs. The Dorman arms fold like butter the Toyota metal does not!!

 

Holy shitty welds batman!

 

Dorman, the Harbor Freight of auto parts.

 

OEM is the best stock version I learned the hard way.

I wonder:
1. Is rebuilding a used OEM such as with aftermarket greasable ball joints as good
2. How folks are upgrading them a lot cheaper than fabricated. I’ve seen some folks add welding reinforcement to them
3. Why people add skids to them or if any don’t block drain holes. Because supposedly all LCA skids use the water drain holes to mount, effectively blocking them and therefore bad

which I suppose new drain holes could be drilled and paint touched up but that’s even more metal taken away from something that’s already not some robust fabricated steel part

 

I don’t trust aftermarket arms. Just retrofitted my ifs. LBJ was recently replaced so did all new control arm bushings and new UBJ. Need a press and without specialized tools I didn’t have, had to cut out some of the old bushings vs press them out. Overall not too difficult, excluding the cutting of the seized cam bolts and definitely less $ than crappy chinese loaded arms that fall apart like posted above. It is a bit tedious cutting out the bushings and adds time, but worth it to me to avoid garbage arms. The are still aftermarket bushings, so not oem quality, but willing to repeat the effort sooner to avoid the high price tag.

 

It isn’t just the welds. They are cracked at the “hump” too.

BTW OP, you should address that CV when you do the new LCAs.

 

So far no issues with mevotech supremes (10k km in)