To be honest the ride quality and tire wear were the reasons I got under there to begin with. The ball joints were in very poor shape. My vehicle has almost 170m on them and there was quite a bit of play. The rubber on all the joints looks good. I was all set to just order all new front end components and do everything in one shot but everything besides the balljoints looked in good shape. So I decided to just do the lowers and right after I had the car aligned with 4 new tires. Seems very tight and responsive now. The lowers seem to be the weak link in the W202 suspension so I figure next time I do them i'll probably do the uppers and the drag link too.