I have a noise that only happens while driving slow and usually over rough areas. I can't really descried the sound other than sounding like a bad bushing. The control arms are 1.5 years old. The real question is I want tubular but don't have the money to buy upper and lower at the same time. Can you put lower tubular with stock uppers and vice versa? Thanks Matt
You're gonna have to check with the manufacture and some do change the camber. Honestly(in my opinion) tubular control arms are a waste of money if you keep the stock suspension/steering.
I have just installed some Global West tubular lower control arms and their adjustable strut rods for my drag race only Maverick, and with their products you can one at a time or the complete front suspension. I have pictures if you like, and their customer service was top notch in my book. I would think that most manfacturers have engineered their products so they can be added one at time..............but it does depend on the manufacturer. http://www.globalwest.net/tbf-7.html http://www.globalwest.net/mnr-73.html http://www.globalwest.net/asr-7.html
Thanks for the replies. I was told the tubular will last longer. I go through these stock arms all the time it seems like. Even the moog stuff doesn't last to long.
I am greatly concerned with the weld quality on tube arms for a street car... sudden catastrophic failure....
Don't know why you are concerned, they have been around for almost 20 years and I have never heard of them failing. I'll wait to see how the stand up when I put the 3300lb Maverick up on the wheelie bars...........besides the tubes/welding is stronger than the stamped sheet metal Mustang/Maverick/Falcon control arms by a factor of almost 2 times.
I've seen pics of failed welds on tubular UCA's.. Hotchkis has never had a UCA fail... other's do fail. Depends on the welder and type of welding. The pics are out there on other forums. As I'm sure you know, aluminum fractures and steel bends..giving warning. Have you seen steel uca's give way suddenly? Just curious... I don't know about the Global West units. They look nice.
The roads around charlotte suck hard. Plus I think it is in the quality mostly. I replace 1 then 1 of the other 4 will go bad. I guess I'm more talking the joints but still a pain to say the least.
I wouldn't worry about replacing the lowers, they're just kind of along for the ride to keep the lower part of the knuckle located. The upper arm carries the weight of the vehicle through the spring. That's why upper ball joints are always being replaced and seldom lower ball joints.
I don't belong to many sites................so which UCA's have failed? I have visited and seen the Global West facility and they use "welding robots" for a lot of their products mainly because they are more repeatable than a human. Aluminum fractures because of fatigue and steel bends because the material is too light or improper bracing..............being a mechanical engineer I am a licensed tech inspector for the SCCA and have never seen any UCA, either aluminum or steel fail, and those are much harsher conditions than you would ever see on the street, and no, I haven't seen a a UCA fail suddenly, but have seen first hand a cast straight axle break at speed................lucky that no one lost their life.
The lower control arm is also subject to a fair amount of stress, and this comes from the "strut rod", this stress is a horizontal twisting instead of vertical like the Upper Control Arm, and was the reason plates were welded to the bottom of the arm boxing it in. This also puts a horizontal stress on the lower ball joint which the upper doesn't see. I believe that if the upper ball is replace, so should the bottom...........IMHO
On some fabricated Mustang II type crossmembers, companies came up with the extended length bolt type lower A frames to do away with the forward strut rod. They weld in tubes to the front and rear of the crossmember alowing the long bolt to be used on an actual "A" type lower control arm. That being said, I read some stories, in the past, of the bolt itself breaking on some applications, not the A Frame, causing the car to go out of control. I can't say how many actual failures they were talking about though.
Well, I know on my own car that I've had for almost 40 years and 200,000+ miles, I've had to replace the upper ball joints four times to replacing the lower arm/ball joints one time. That was just about 6 years ago and the only reason for replacing the lowers was because the bushings had finally crapped out.
When I took my Maverick front end apart.........car only has 33,000 plus maybe 500/600 times down the strip...........and the top ball joints had at least been replaced once and bottoms had never been replaced......they were toast, the new tubular bottom control arms they have NASCAR style screw in joints...............so I won't have to throw the arms away, just replace the ball joint..........plus screw-in type is much stronger the stock and should last for another 500/600 runs. Over 20 years ago I installed one of the first tubular front suspensions on my 1965 Mustang, and it totally transformed the way the car handled turning it into a true canyon carver.
