Interesting Godspeed Arm Failure

[Matt93SE]

It's a poor design though. properly, those threads should be hardened and use a weld-in threaded bung. something like these:


Then again, tie rod tubes don't have them, but they're swaged DOM steel (US-made at that) usually and have much better standards than the chinese junk..

just beware when you're buying that kind of stuff..

[CodyAce]

Why can I predict every 'defspeed baller control arm' club member taking their **** apart this week/weekend to check?

At least it's something to address/look for.

[Def]

a big problem with using a rodend in the control arm is its put in bending on braking (arm pushes forward against the subframe, pivoting around the tension rod.)

im guessing what happened here is the arm is thin enough where the sleeve threads in that it allowed it to deform under high load. possible fix = weld a sleeve over the inner end of the arm? (stronger in bending)

That rod end is not in bending. It is on the inboard pivot and the tension rod locates it fore/aft.


This is user error, he hhd the inner sleeve barely threaded in. You cas do that with ANY am that you only let a few threads take the load.

I know I have more track time and load my arms up more than anybody on Zilvia and min arfine. sure, they're cheap and show it, but they're still mild steel arms with plenty of strength for the job.

[Def]

WoW,

That's about 10% thread depth, nice work godspeed nice work indeed

The arm is at stock length with the jam nuts bottomed out the way. Id hardly blame the chinaman when some idiot on zilvia threads the rod end all the way in then adjusts the reverse threaded insert 1.5" out to get a more mad tire stance on his pizza cutters.

This would happen with ANY arm installed like that.

[McCoy]

With the jam nut all the way up against the rod end and the visible damage to the threads on the threaded insert I'd guess to say he originally had the threaded insert threaded in all the way in and it slipped out over time.

[o1roadkingrider]

I'm thinking it came like that from the supplier... here is what mine looked like out of the box... it's hard to tell but it is mushroomed out like the one above, just hard to tell in this picture. And that isn't PC on the threads, there is no threads near the top

Talk about not being ready for your close-up. Look at the rust damage under the powder coat. Just where do they get their material? Maybe junk yards, or possibly they store it out behind the shack where its laying all down in the mud.... who knows. I've considered these before, but as of my reading this thread, NOT! NFW

[Tower240sx]

The arm is at stock length with the jam nuts bottomed out the way. Id hardly blame the chinaman when some idiot on zilvia threads the rod end all the way in then adjusts the reverse threaded insert 1.5" out to get a more mad tire stance on his pizza cutters.

This would happen with ANY arm installed like that.

DEF, I was referring specifically to the pic of the part that hadn't been installed, obviously the guy on zilvia threw some extra stupid in on top of mediocre quality, but it just looks like the godspeed arms are a tap ran into a piece of tube that is much larger than the specified hole size for the tap, there is just no thread depth, those threads are heavily truncated...before user error can even occur.

[Beejis60]

Did anyone ever do a "defspeed" rear LCA type of write up?

[Def]

DEF, I was referring specifically to the pic of the part that hadn't been installed, obviously the guy on zilvia threw some extra stupid in on top of mediocre quality, but it just looks like the godspeed arms are a tap ran into a piece of tube that is much larger than the specified hole size for the tap, there is just no thread depth, those threads are heavily truncated...before user error can even occur.

Yea, I've seen some cheap arms like that. Mine weren't bad. Looked to be right around 75% thread depth.

With a cheap part the onous is on the buyer to do the quality control on the part.

[e1_griego]

Both my lca's had play where the sleeves goes into the tube. Just a tiny bit, but fuuuck.

Welded them up tonight and hopefully that'll be the last problem. Both QA1s have a tiny bit of axial play, guessing from the play in the sleeve? I'm not gonna worry about it for a little while...

This is not my month....


Oh and the smoke that comes off is *horrendous* when you weld on these.

I am so thankful that this thread got posted -- probably wouldn't have checked otherwise.

[e1_griego]

On the plus side they're not ricer red any more lol -- finally painted 'em black.

[Jonty]

With a cheap part the onous is on the buyer to do the quality control on the part.

As someone who regularly deals with the chinese quality/cost trade off I would entirely agree with you, however if some 17yr old kid on zilvia gets killed because of some utterly crap quality and even worse QC, I think the buck stops with Godspeed- my company uses Chinese components, but we don't trust them an inch...

[Def]

I agree the buck does stop with GS, and maybe something like that will wake up the industry that there needs to be some engineering/quality control at some basic level.

But yea, I do QA checks on every component that goes on my car. If it doesn't lass muster it gets binned.

[Jonty]

I agree the buck does stop with GS, and maybe something like that will wake up the industry that there needs to be some engineering/quality control at some basic level.

But yea, I do QA checks on every component that goes on my car. If it doesn't lass muster it gets binned.

It amuses me that on almost all parts they say "for race use only, not for use on the public highway" as that means they can try and dodge the 1 year warranty you have to provide on all items in Europe, and also if someone has an issue on the road that lead to an accident they will try to claim that the same failure wouldn't have had the same result on the race track... yet everybody in the aftermarket industry knows that 90% of the kit goes on road cars (just look at the traffic of Zilvia compared to here)

I understand that they make that statement to get away from having to get TUV approval or similar (I don't know if you know, but TUV is a private company, and getting them to pass every conceivable product for sale in Germany is at once the biggest piece of anti-competition and protectionism I have ever come across) which of course would add huge amounts of cost and increase time to market and basically scrap the entire aftermarket industry, but it still shouldn't be licence to produce complete and utter crap like these Godspeed components!!

[Tower240sx]

^^^ THIS and any number of "aftermarket" companies taking good designs and making close replicas with no thought to form fit or function...if the first article looks ok they buy 1000 and ship without ever opening the boxes