Are aftermarket A body upper control arms worth it ?
This was when I was building my dart. Maybe 10 years ago? Things have likely changed alot since then.
It was all over Fabo at the time. Heim joints was another issue.
Hotchkiss and many others were not available at the time
This is coming from memory and a bit foggy.
Yes, exactly. That was over 10 years ago and a single, small manufacturer that has been out of business now for the better part of 10 years.
The heim joint thing was never about failures. There are wear/longevity issues associated with running heims on the street. But again, some of those issues were before heim joint boots were widely available. And really, that’s about application. Yeah, I’ve had the Hotchkis supplied heims wear out in 7k miles. But I was also driving year round on the street without heim boots (not available), seeing all weather conditions, gravel roads etc. On a track car, or even a street car that sees limited mileage or only fair weather driving it can be a different story.
Personally I prefer to keep bushings vs heims and use Delrin or poly bushings But that’s a street car that sees a significant amount of yearly mileage. I don’t like changing heims every year or every other year. For a different application it may be perfectly reasonable to run heims, some people might get 10 years out of them were I got one just on mileage.
But that’s a
REALLY different story than saying there’s been “a lot of people had breakage” from “all the different manufacturers”. That’s just straight up not true, and a complete misrepresentation of reality. How often do ball joints pop out of the stock UCA’s? How many people put tack welds on the ball joints when using stock UCA’s? That’s far more frequent than documented aftermarket UCA failures.
It’s unfortunate when posts get this far off track.
I agree, it’s unfortunate when people make wild over generalizations and exaggerate/misrepresent facts to mislead people into thinking something that isn’t true, whether that’s intentional or just bad information.
But all I did was call bullshit on the misinformation that was given.
There are still points to be made there, it’s not off topic. CAP did make UCA’s and there were failures. That is a consideration! You are buying a part that is essential and
critical. So using a known manufacturer with a good track record, even if they’re not the cheapest, should be something people evaluate.
As a guy trying to sell the most expensive UCA’s currently available I would think you’d want good information out there that represents the facts, quality, and utility of the aftermarket UCA’s out there.
