Tubular control arms vs rebushing

If you stay with the stock upper control arms, make sure you use offset UCA bushings like the Moog K7103. If you don't, you won't be able to get a decent alignment for radial tires. Remember the factory specs are for bias ply tires, and are totally backward for radials.

It really depends on the use of the car too. If this is mostly just a weekend cruiser, rebuilding the stock parts will be fine as long as you use offset UCA bushings to improve the alignment specs. The handling will improve, but only because your current parts are worn out. If you're planning on more of a canyon carver, go with tubular UCA's. You get more adjustment with them, which means even better alignment numbers than what you'll be able to get with the offset bushings, which means better handling still. But you'll need better tires, larger torsion bars, better shocks, etc, to notice that difference. So if you're not planning on doing any of that, stock UCA's with offset bushings will be fine.

The tubular lowers that QA1 sells are nice, but unless your car is lowered quite a bit I don't think there's a reason to spend the money. They're lighter, sure, but unless you're racing against the clock you'll never notice that difference. Heck even if you are you might not. I have a set on my car, they're awesome don't get me wrong, but you're not gaining much for your money compared to using stock LCA's with a reinforcing plate installed.

With the UCA's if you go tubular, stay away from heim joints if you've got a street car. For a track car, or maybe a low miles, only-drive-when-it's-sunny car they're fine. But on a frequently driven street car they see too much grit and grime, and heim joints are a consumable part. I run Hotchkis UCA's on my Challenger, the first set of heims only lasted 7,000 miles. Now that was without heim boots as they weren't available when those UCA's first came out. Hotchkis replaced them for me and set me a set of boots with them. 7k miles later, and I'd say they'll probably need to be replaced in a couple thousand miles. Heims at the UCA's are for race cars IMO.

I do use adjustable strut rods on all of my cars. The stock strut rods have no real adjustment, and they only work because of the large amount of slop allowed by the large, soft bushings. I would not use poly bushings with stock strut rods, you have no way to adjust the length and the chances of them being the exact right length with out of the box poly bushings are slim. Funny enough, I've never had an issue with the heim jointed adjustable strut rods wearing out heims. The set of my Challenger has laster 70k + miles, and that's year round daily driven street miles in all weather conditions, same car that chews through UCA heims.

And finally, changing out all those bushings and ball joints will take access to a shop press, a ball joint socket, torque wrench, and some special bushing tools (which can be made pretty easily with hardware store parts). If you don't have all that stuff you'll need to add that to the cost of replacing all the bushings as opposed to buying new parts with them installed already. Some of the stuff can be borrowed from parts store loan out programs (like the ball joint socket usually), but some of it can't be. If you've got the tools great, if you don't, changing everything out yourself will cost more money than just buying the bushings and ball joints.