...

 

Very nice . Hmm. could you weigh them for us.

 

Do the Megans have an OEM type rubber bushing like the SPC? Their website says something about Anti-Dust Pillowball Ends.

 

Try this. Take each one of these arms separately and place it across two blocks, bricks, or whatever may work. Place them so the they suspend across the two blocks like you were making it a bridge, with only the ends on the blocks. Now stand on it and bounce a slight bit. One of them will bend in half I bet. One may slightly deform, and the other two may flex, but return to original shape.
Stay away from the one that bends!

 

Unless you never drive your car I can pretty much guarantee you'll see more than 50 lbs of force applied in flex to those arms.
No force applied to those arms will be linear. Tension, compression and torsion will never be in a pure direction on any suspension component. It will always be a combination of any or all of those elements.
Add rod ends or solid bushings and the momentary load spike will be even higher.

My money would not be on the SPC units.



For example. Where the knuckle ends and the mill work reduces to the threaded section. That is a 90º transition. That's not good. It's a stress point waiting to fail. That work also leads me to believe these are cut threads and not cold rolled. Nowhere near as strong.

 

 

I don't know jack, but I have warm fuzzy feeling inside about the IE.

 

Blue ones would bend first, then the SPC. The Alta and IE would survive the best.
And yes, there are some much greater forces on these arms then just 50lbs. If any one here remembers what happened to some of the stocker units, it was pretty catastrophic. Wish I could access my old pictures from my busted external hard drive. ... =(

 

It would take the least force to bend the Megan but we have no idea what that force would be, and if it could be created while driving the car. While the threaded joints of the SPC are closer to the center of the arm, the diameter of the threads is substantially larger than any of the other units. I have used the stockers, the IEs and the SPC, and it wasn't resistance to bending forces that made me change from IE to SPC, it was the bushings. Just ask meb.

 

That piece looks like it is alloy or aluminum. The concept of strengthening by cold rolling only applies to steel.

 

Really? There seems to be a little bit of a dividing line here. Any other opinions/experience/facts?

 

In response to the loads imposed on the lower arms.....check out db's experience here and here. And there was even another post somewhere about a young lady being stranded on the side of the road after the same thing happened to her much lower mileage MINI.

 

Simple question for all you posters: With heim joints at each end, how are you going to get any lateral loads. You'll only get axial loading. Maybe the laws of physics have changed since I went to engineering school.

 

So, your saying that as long as I have hiems I can build my arms from a 2"x3/4" strip of plywood?

 

Pretty much as long as the tensile and compressive strength of the plywood is as great as the metal being used (which it ain't).

Let me give you an example: If you carefully stand on the top of an empty beer can (even pressure on the top such as would be applied by a heim joint) it will not collapse. If you stand on the side of a beer can, all the care in the world won't keep it from getting crushed.

 

You're just plain wrong but that's OK. Buy what you want.
I try to help. If you won't listen or do the research then so be it.

 

Careful, he "went to engineering school"

 

Yes but one of the old party tricks was to get someone to balance on the beer can and then have them just tap the beer can with their fingers.
If they weren't very quick the can would collapse and smash their fingers.
Damn funny for everyone else.
Soooooo. Any compression load in conjunction with a minor flex will excert much more force than just a flex load alone(which I think we all agree does not happen in isolation).


Disclaimer:
I did not, nor do I ever plan to, go to mechanical engineering school.

 

Sooo..who's going to be hanging from the bottom of your car and tapping on the trailing arm while you're driving?

 

Knowing me...a cone

 

The point I was trying to make was that these arms do have loads being imposed on them that would cause them to break in the middle of the arm, not at the ends.

 

As far as i can tell that doesnt appear to be the case. The greatest angle i see looks to be around 75-80 degrees.

Edit: Just noticed that the angle on the SPC is 90 degrees (syupid shadow). However given how friggen huge the SPC is it probably doesnt make that much of a differance.

 

Looking at the ends of all the arms, it seems the Alta sleeve has a larger diameter than the rest, is this the case? If it is ,why?

 

Thanks for the pics and dialog. I just put SPC lower rear control arms on my GP and (once we finish at the shop today) I am looking forward to some enjoyable back roads driving. Sad to say, I didn't realize I needed to change these out until I started questioning the significant inner tire tread wear on the first set of non-run flats we put on the GP. Next year, I'll upgrade the brakes and get some track time going. Well, thanks again for the good thread here!

 

so after u install the spc arm ,what is your rear camber to be .