[s-cars] Control Arm Source and Wheel Quandry

[Abe Berman]

Patient is a 95.5 Avant.

1.  Need a front control arm bushing, 3/4 of mine is missing.  What is the
current sentiment on brand/source for C4 control arms?

2.  I'm running separate sets of summers and winters currently.
 Unfortunately, bad roads/inattentive driving ate up two of my winter wheels
this year, to the point that they cannot be balanced.  I checked on getting
them fixed and the price was $125/wheel, which is fairly steep for winter
wheels based on my budget.  Those wheels are 17x7.5 2003 Audi A4 5 spokes
and I have 1 season old 225/45/17 snows on them.  Bought the set of rims
with no tires for $125 last year, a steal, I know.

I now know why Bob R. said to go with 16's for snows...  The summer rims
that I run are 17x8’s which I usually run 245/40/17’s on, but I don’t have
any tires mounted on them now.

I am more inclined to replace the existing winter set of wheels (depending
on what I can talk my wife into as she thinks that 3 cars and 7 sets of
wheels and tires is already enough…) as opposed to fixing them, but I am
probably somewhat constrained on price.  Finding that there are some used
wheel sets out there that I could probably get into for reasonable cost.

Question:  Anyone in the Northeast have some 17" wheels they need to
offload?  Anyone know of a more reasonable wheel repair facility in the
Northeast?  I have until next winter to fix them, so no rush.

Thanks,

Abe
Burlington, VT