72bluNblu - here are a few photos of my tube UCA's. These were bought over 6 years ago, i bought them a few years ago from the guy, but although he told me the brand, i can't remember. CAP does NOT sound familiar though, but these do look like ones in the original post. I would like to think that if these were manufactured over 6 years ago, then the incompetent welder (responsible for the failed ones) might not have done these ! Its not the CAP products in general that are at fault, its the poor welds turned out on some of them by some idiot who shouldn't be working there. These ones here have the Hiem joints, and i have also posted some closeups of the welds. Can you or anyone ID the brand or see if the welds look MIG or TIG? Someone on this forum said that gussetting (a la Magnum Force, Hotchkiss and Firm Feel) is not necessary. I disagree. You only have to look at the small amount of material on these welds and know of the huge loads that they have to carry, to see that some sort of gussetting would be adviseable. Its liek a road bridge - most well designed bridges could easily perform well 98% of the time with 25% of their support material removed -but its that freak strong storm combined with a load of heavy trucks that will bring it down, so the engineer's have to allow for this. So too the UCA - they should be able to withstand radial and side loads that would not be experienced in normal driving.
