Has anyone had any problems with the Arraut Motorsports front tubular control arms? I have their front coilover setup with 1" drop spindles on my 88 Mera, After seeing the broken spindles, mine have the extra lower brace like this one, I think I will put the OEM spindles back on the car. I would like to keep the coilover set up, I would appreciate others thoughts about keeping the control arms made by Arraut.
I've never heard of any failures with the front arms, just the spindles. However if you saw the other thread, the OP now had the REAR fail on his 88 which pretty much destroyed the car.
Personally, I would leave the coilover setup on the car, put the stock front spindles on and get Rodney's 1" lowering ball joints.
[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 05-16-2020).]
I have the same setup, but I haven't put a lot of miles on it. I worry about the crappy parts all the time. I plan to leave it as is for now, I spent too much money on it, so I guess I'll just watch it and get under the car from time to time to check on the welds.
I have the same setup, but I haven't put a lot of miles on it. I worry about the crappy parts all the time. I plan to leave it as is for now, I spent too much money on it, so I guess I'll just watch it and get under the car from time to time to check on the welds.
Do you have Arraut spindles on your car? I have about 8,000 miles on the Arrarut setup on my car and check it very close before I start driving it in spring and at least one more time during driving season. My setup has about 8,000 miles on it, so far no issues. Most miles are around town, some smooth and some kinda rough surface streets and some freeway. On the way to the 35th show there was a bridge approach that was under construction and I may have got some air when I hit it. The alignment stayed spot on and when I got home everything looked OK with the A arms and spindles.
The front spindles that failed are much different than the pair on my car and just don't look like a very strong design. Maybe Arraut forgot to put the lower support pieces on when they built them.
Bloozberry has the braced spindles on one of his cars, when the spindle failure showed up last year I asked Dave for his opinion and he said the ones that have the lower bracing should be good. If Dave thinks they are OK they probably are. If you are familiar with his background he really knows what he is doing. His fabrication skills are very impressive, his F355 is amazing.
If you have the same style as Dave which was the Held design, you should be fine. It seems Arraut rushed the assembly of the spindles and used a few shortcuts.
I posted this in another thread but I believe this is the cause of the failures.
With Daves spindle from Held, the weld seam is on the outside where all of the structural welding and gussets are. On the spindle that broke, there is no seam to the outside which leads us to believe that they welded the parts with the seam inside towards the car. That would mean that the seam had no support and could easily split open under stress especially since the seam would run right through the cutout for the nut. In this pic, here's where I THINK the seam is located under the powdercoating:
[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 05-17-2020).]
Has anyone had any problems with the Arraut Motorsports front tubular control arms? I have their front coilover setup with 1" drop spindles on my 88 Mera, After seeing the broken spindles, mine have the extra lower brace like this one, I think I will put the OEM spindles back on the car. I would like to keep the coilover set up, I would appreciate others thoughts about keeping the control arms made by Arraut.
I personally wouldn't trust my life to any part with welds that looked that way. They may be good welds and maybe they aren't but they look awful.
The front spindles that failed are much different than the pair on my car and just don't look like a very strong design. Maybe Arraut forgot to put the lower support pieces on when they built them.
The first pair of spindles I got from them had two issues. the first issue was that the extra bracing between the round "tube" and the part were the steering link attaches was missing. The second issue was that the taper for the steering end link was drilled upside down.
I sent them back and the second set did have the extra bracing and the taper was drilled correct, however, i don't know what "taper" they used to drill them out, but it did not fit the steering end link. I had to get a 1/2 drill bit and clearance the end a bit to get the end link to fit into the taper enough to get the nut on far enough to put the castle nut/cotter pin in.
I had other issues w/ this pair of spindles. You could tell they were made on two different days or by two different shops b/c when put side-by-side they had several differences. some day I may remove them and install the stock spindles and try to figure out some way of getting the Wilwood calipers to still fit.
I ended up taking my car to a local shop and asked the owners to look at the front suspension setup as if they had just acquired the car. They both have many years of experience building and servicing all manner of performance and race cars. They said that the A arms looked good but recommended taking both spindles off the car, removing the powdercoat and having them magnafluxed and then beefing up some of the welding. When I installed the setup I was a bit concerned with the appearance of some of the welds on the spindles, the A arms looked OK, probably not done by the same welder.
When I removed the spindles, much to my surprise, I found that the lower ball joint nuts weren't tight. I know that they were tight when I installed them but due to their design my torque wrench wouldn't work. After both spindles were off the car I found that the taper on the lower ball joint mount didn't match the ball joint stud taper, probably a bit more than 1/32" larger at the bottom. I put in new lower ball joints and the stock spindles. I can drive it now without the thought that one of my front wheels might fall off, also an annoying, occasional rattle that I could never find the source of is gone.
My setup did not have any provision for bumpstops so while I was working on it I found a pair of Energy Suspension bumpstops that worked out pretty good. I mounted them on the lower A arm behind the sway bar links. They hit the factory upper bumpstop bracket when the tire is about 3/4" from the inner fender.
The fiero would be one of the few cars that could have strong arguments for and against coil overs but i am really impressed with these just perhaps a little more engineering.
[This message has been edited by Australian (edited 07-23-2020).]
