[s-cars] hamburg technic

Tom Green trgreen at comcast.net
Mon Oct 12 09:54:16 PDT 2009


Chris,

I bought some hamburg-techik rear control arms for the S6 sedan to  
cure a squeaking original after I got tired of squirting grease in it  
with a needle nosed fitting.  I should have just
stuck with the original.  These squeak worse than before after only a  
year and the rubber bushing has totally disintegrated.  It started  
showing cracks like dry rot after only a few months.  I don't see any  
ball joint problems with them, but the original ball joints looked  
fine also.  There is not much movement in them like the front is  
subjected to.  These were from an ebay seller deutche-parts and half  
the price of Febi arms, so I should have known.

I see lots of comments about the casting looks.   I have never heard  
of a structural problem with any of these parts.  It is always the  
rubber quality in the bushings and ball joint quality.  I have the  
Karlyn arms on the front of my sedan with 2 years/20K miles on them  
with no issues at all.  Blau was selling them and they had vw/audi  
stickers and 4 rings on them, but I later found out from Pelican parts  
that they were Karlyn arms (a NY company that confirmed the arms were  
manufactured in Taiwan).  Pelican sells them for about half
what Blau charged for them.

I carry a hamburg-technik POS in the glove box for a spare.  It tested  
ok at 20 psi boost so I figured it would get me home if one failed,  
but I would have never bought it for a regular replacement part.  They  
source parts from India, Turkey, Croatia, and Serbia.  I think their  
good stuff comes from China.  :-)

It's pretty much a crap-shoot on the origin of parts now, but we know  
FEQ is Chinese, and Febi and Meyle source from China.  There is no  
reason that high quality parts can't be made there;  it's just a  
matter of quality control and oversight, not the cheapest bid.

Tom





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