Almost 4.5 months later, my car finally made it to Ukraine. Late in the evening on May 16th, I got sent photos of the car carrier in my city.
The next morning I headed to the shop where the follow-up repair was to happen. There the car was put up on a lift and the damage assessment began.
In the end, after a visual inspection of the suspension, the following parts came up needing replacement:
Front right suspension:
- Front right wheel hub/knuckle
- Front right driveshaft
- Right sway bar link
- Right lower control arm
- Right ball joint
- Complete steering tie rod
- Brake disc
- Right caliper
Rear left suspension:
- Steering/track rod
- Sway bar link
- Trailing arm
- Wheel hub/knuckle
- Brake disc
- Caliper shield
- Left caliper with parking brake
- Upper control arm
- Lower control arm
- Ride height sensor
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a suspension list this long. But there was no turning back at this point. The suspension parts came out to about $1,050, and almost all of those were aftermarket — if you go full genuine, you can triple that number. It also helped that I’d bought new wheels before the car even arrived in Ukraine. The wheels that were on the car were no longer usable.
I bought genuine wheels, but in black lacquer finish, from Poland. They came out to €740 for the set.
- Model number: 8V0 601 025 CD
- Wheel specs: 7.5J x 18H2 ET51
- Weight: 12.5 kg per wheel
Right up until the end I was hoping the old tires could be swapped onto the new wheels, but unfortunately the old tires were punctured, torn and unusable. Had to look for other tires — thought about buying used, but there was nothing decent up to 10,000 UAH. In the end I bought new, inexpensive ones — probably the best of the budget options — Tigar UHP XL 225/40 R18. That came to 10,500 UAH with delivery, plus another 800 UAH for mounting.
They also tried to bring the 12V battery back to life, but it wouldn’t take a charge, so a new one had to be bought. The new one cost 5,000 UAH. Since I had a factory-fitted Varta AGM 58ah 6RO915105A, I decided to get something similar from the same manufacturer — a Varta Silver Dynamic AGM 60ah.
That’s essentially everything that was needed first. I waited about 5 days for the suspension parts to arrive, and then it all got installed on the car in a single day. The next stage is straightening and replacing the rear fender’s infill panel — I’ll cover that in the next post.