So I was driving on the freeway, slowing down as I was approaching traffic. I hit a small bump on the road, nothing out of the ordinary. Luckily when this happened, I was only going about 35mph. At first I thought I had a flat, got out of the car and was VERY surprised. Basically my left front tire was positively cambered all the way in, to the point where the tire was up against the shock. I thought the bolt that holds the A arm onto the steering knuckle came off or something. Had to get a tow, get to the dealership, jack the car up and... check the pics. WOW!

The adjuster bolt completely sheered off from the A arm!! I will say that I'm surprised because I got the more expensive A arms just to make sure I did everything right the first time. SPL is going to make right, pay for my tow, for the dealership to put my OEM A arms back on, and send me new arms (at least that's what they have said). I don't understand why the main adjuster bolt is hollow though! For a part on your car that obviously has to handle a lot of stress, you'd think those things would be solid. The Infiniti mechanic took the other one off and said that they all thought they are "unsafe" since it's a hollow bolt. I'm a bit hesitant to get a new set, if this can easily happen again. Thank god the steering knuckle didn't damage my new coilovers that badly.

Check the pics. Anyone seen/heard of this happening before?! Sucks! Also, look at the pic of my coilover, I don't think it's damaged but just want opinions. Just rubbed off some of the coating on the spring....

 

it looks like you had it extended past the safe point.

per instructions it states:

Verify safe thread engagement:

Rod end should have no more than 0.3" of thread visible

http://www.splparts.com/doc/SPLFCAZ33/default.htm

correct me if i'm wrong.

 

I'm looking at the instructions right now... the 0.3" is for the caster bolt adjusters.... if you keep reading the instructions under the "setting camber" portion it states that adjuster should have no more than 1" of thread visible and rod end should have no more than 0.72" of thread visible. I measured VERY carefully when I was installing these. In fact, I simply adjusted the SPL parts to be roughly the same length as the OEM A arms. Visibly I could still see a fair about of neg camber. Which indicated to me that I didn't over extend them. You can see that there is still a lot of thread left inside the A arm, more than enough that it shouldn't have sheered off.

I also took photos with a tape measure next to the bolt and sent them to SPL. They haven't said they were over extended to me. They were installed correctly...

The type of metal that the bolt is made out of could heave been a bad batch of alloy or something.

 

crazy.. good thing for good customer service. goodluck

 

sent an email with link to SPL. i'm running the same a-arms and want some re-assurance this is a freak accident.

 

^1 same here.

i just had my installed less than a week ago and got my alignment a few days ago. it looks fine and got me back in specs but now im worried about this happening. and i never heard anything bad about them before, until after i install mine, thats just my luck.

 

I only heard very positive things about these A arms as well, which is why I went and bought them after I already had a Cusco set.

Do let me mention again that dealing with SPL thus far has been very pleasant. I just wanted to share with everyone so that the problem is remedied and this won't happen to anyone else! I trust that SPL will work this out and things will be fine in the end. But the point of this place is to share info and frankly what happened was pretty damn unsafe!

 

Let me just address some points:

The adjusters are made from 12L14 steel, which has a tensile strength of 78ksi, only slightly lower than 4130 chromoly (81ksi). It is a pretty strong steel.

The adjusters are back-drilled to reduce unsprung weight. The fact that we hollow it out does not make it weak, it is still effectively a steel tube of 1" diameter with .1" wall thickness. Just for example, the stock rear camber arm is a hollow steel tube of about 1" diameter, and most likely thinner wall (most tubular steel used for control arms are much thinner than 0.1"), that does not make it unsafe. The comment made by the Infiniti mechanic is not unwarranted given the situation, but he is not a trained mechanical engineer. Yes the adjuster might not have broken if it was solid, but there was no reason why the hollow adjuster is not strong enough in this application.

Our front upper arms have been used on many race cars (CVW rally Z, RA time attack Z, M-Workz time attack Z, Chris Forsberg's Formula-Drift Z, to name a few) for year now, without any failures on this (hollow) adjuster. These cars generate alot more stress on the arms than on a street car.

We also use this same adjuster on most of the control arms we offer for the 240SX and 300ZX. We have sold hundreds of these arms in total, and so far this is the ONLY incident where an adjuster failed.

We do not know if this was just a material defect (for example, a small void in the metal), if the adjuster got chipped or damaged during transport/plating, or a problem with the install, or if this is a bigger problem with our last batch of adjusters. We've been working on setting up a controlled test of some of the adjusters from our last batch, as soon as we were contacted by Keith last Friday evening. We have gone above and beyond the standard warranty (that is warranty only for the parts, and not for any labor or damages; this is the industry standard) to compensate Keith for the problem. We wish Keith waited for us to finish handling the problem before posting, since we have not no time to really analyze the failure...

For those customers with our new adjuster (the ones with a billet aluminum clamp), please ensure that the clamp is oriented to the sides, not towards the top or bottom of the car. If it is oriented to the top, it can bottom out prematurely against the fender, and if oriented to the bottom, it can bottom out against the upright. Currently, our leading hypothesis for the failure is that the clamp bottomed out against the fender and caused an extraordinary bending stress on the adjuster (which would not have happened under normal operation).

 

Kuah and his company are tremendous when it comes to product support and customer service.

I can only believe that a post like this and a response by you only makes SPL Parts look better to the car community.

I did just notice the billet aluminum clamp. Is this a revised piece on the A-Arm an improvement over the old set-up?

 

SPL recalled 5 sets of these a-arms. My set is included in the recall.

 

So the recall (so far) has been for the revised version with the clamp?

 

Sorry for not posting the information earlier, we only figured out the problem over the weekend and have been busy getting in touch with the customers that are affected, and working on a good resolution of the issue.

The problem turned out to be a machining mistake on a small batch of adjusters, this batch of adjusters was drilled out too much, resulting in too thin a wall thickness. The arms affected by this are those that are built and shipped in the month of June, and there are 5 sets of arms that may be affected (we sold only 5 sets of arms in June, and not all may have been assembled with this adjuster). One set is at the dealer and has not yet been installed, one set belonged to Keith (the OP), and we have contacted the other 3 customers that may be affected. We will be paying for all labor involved in replacing the part for the recall.

The only arms that are recalled are the ones built in June, that have the black hybrid adjuster with the billet aluminum clamp. If you have any concerns, please feel free to call or email us.

 

Looks like I got lucky after all- my set does not have the aluminum clamp with the allen key (just has three nuts instead) and is not affected by the recall.

 

DOMO ok great!! my set doesnt have the aluminum clamp also. so i'm in the clear.

 

Wow, excellent customer service!!!