Interesting Godspeed Arm Failure

[CodyAce]

Was browsing Zilvia, and came across a member who broke his godspeed arms. Obviously though caught my interest, and felt as if I should pass it along here.



From the O/P (user: jdm240sx122)

So pretty much what happened is the end/threaded part of the control arm seperated from the rest of the arm. If you look closely in the picture the end of the arm looks a little mushroomed out. This is where the arm was completely pulled apart.(seperated)

Yes I am very hard on my car, but in my opinion this shouldnt of happened...

Just some food for thought. Unsure if this is anything I should be realistically worried about or not.

[CodyAce]

Now on my personal car, I don't recall having that inner adjuster sleeve (the part that goes into the arm) that far extended, I sort of equall spaced the rod and and that sleeve.

I know bottomed out, they look like this (I wish I made them even when taking pics)

[veilside180sx]

Most likely he had it extended to far, and a lack of thread depth engagement.

[McCoy]

I have a set of godspeed arms in my garage that look like the failed ones posted, they came like that from the supplier. From the looks of mine something seriously went wrong when they were tapping the tube and it mushroomed it some and did a piss-poor job of threading too. I could thread mine in, but with force could pull it out. Luckily I caught it and was able to get the supplier (from zilvia) to send me a new set.

[PerilousActs]

Glad you posted this, as I'm about to drop the ball on a set and it's definitely something I will watch out for.

[sil8y]

I have the circutsports ones and I don't see that on them but I will definitely keep a good watch on them. It does look like the kid was going wider than maybe he should have and is that scaring on the joint or is it dirt gathered at the articulation limit? I can't really see in the pic.@

[josh18_2k]

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)

[McCoy]

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

[AceInHole]

Wow.... those are some shallow threads. Mine didn't look anything like that, IIRC.

[McCoy]

Wow.... those are some shallow threads. Mine didn't look anything like that, IIRC.

The new set I got (now owned by Alex) were fine, just this one of the first pair was bad.

[e1_griego]

I didn't notice anything goofy.

I'll be under there tonight tacking the jam nuts so I'll look.

[McCoy]

I didn't notice anything goofy.

The ones I sold to you were in good shape... then again, it never hurts to inspect them

[Tower240sx]

WoW,

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

[Matt93SE]

That's why you don't buy chinese crap.

good way to die when the suspension comes apart in the middle of a turn.

[McCoy]

I'd call it more a quality control issue... or lack of it. With upgraded parts, it's still a good solution for the price.