Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction here. I bought Passat alloy arms shown in the background complete with console bushings but realise now that they are pattern parts (made by Meyle and available on ebay). As I wanted to upgrade the bushes, I also bought the solid Febi Bilstein ones shown in the foreground. Now here is the ‘interesting’ part. The new solid bushes are too small for the new pattern part housings which are about 2mm larger in inner diameter. The Meyle housings look pretty shoddily made too as the wall thickness is extremely uneven. I assume that the best route will be to use the existing console housings on the car which should fit the new bushes perfectly and then fit the new console arm as normal but am beginning to wonder if I know what I am doing here.

Anybody else been down this route? If so, am I better off stopping now?

Possibly. I thought about a similar thing but ordered the arms from Skoda so they would fit. 172 inc free delivery for both sides with all bushes. Not as pretty but they fit. What a bummer.

just re-use your old console housings with your new bushes.

 

you will need a press to remove the old bushes and to press in the new ones

as above your existing consoles should be fine, just put new bushes in them before you fit the arms.

 

my s3/cupra arms are oem and came with console and bush already fitted, about 110 per side iirc?

Well I may end up taking one for the team here. Went back to check and these Meyle manufactured Passat arms cost me £119 for the pair and came complete with all bushes and new ball joints. On the face of it then they looked like a bargain, especially when compared to the SuperPro kit which uses the exact same Passat arms. If all that is required is to swap the bushes out of the existing consoles then that would still be a good result. I will see if they can do the whole lot at the wheel alignment place.