Dave in Chicago

Thanks Jeff. Looks like a prudent PM item to add to the list. I guess when we are forcing 944/968 series cars to corner like Cup cars, we should expect to begin applying a more appropriate "replace x at y hours whether it needs it or not" approach.

Man! Racing is getting expen$ive...

Skip

The pin is at the end of the arm - it attaches the arm to the spindle/steering knuckle. The pinch bolt is part of the spindle/steering knuckle and holds the pin in place. The pin is also referred to as the control arm ball joint. On early cars with steel arms, the entire ball joint can be replaced easily and inexpensively. On later cars with aluminum arms, the replacement process is a bit more more expensive and complex.

Red arrow indicates pin/ball-joint:

ninefiveone

This is why I've moved to Markus Blaszak's modified early steel arms. I'm not sure what regular replacement interval I'll use going forward but I'm thinking it's not a bad idea to replace the ball joints at the start of every season.

Skip

That's what I have on mine as well. While they do not suffer from the same level of complications associated to cast aluminum arms, at ~$15/side it's worth considering replacement every season.

V2Rocket

Yay for early steel!

Mike C.

Thanks Skip.

maddydaddy

I have never replaced my control arms, but if I were to replace them with like stock units, would this piece be replaced also? Or is it something that needs to be done IN ADDITION TO replacing the arms "while your in there"? Forgive me if this is obvious........

James Reeser
89 944 S2

Techno Duck

Unfortunetley there are no cheap alternative control arms for your '89 S2. You have the option of rebuilding the ball joint with a few aftermarket kits available (mainly Rennbay). Other than that, you are looking at either new control arms from Porsche @ $500 each, or in the area of $1000 - $2000 (depending which you choose) for after market arms.

anders44

I know a guy in canada had custom 19mm spherical balljoints made, close to $500 though, will have him post some pics here when i get a hold of him.

I recently order the 17mm race kit from rennbay, so hopefully it won't fail. when doing 250kmh on track, or even worse autobahn. a failure could be very very very bad.

Techno Duck

Anders, i have over 10k miles on my rebuilt arms from Rennbay and the longer 17mm pins. I have done 5 auto-x's and they are still holding up fine. This also includes a number of trips into Manhattan where the roads are arguably rougher on ball joints than auto-x's.

The most important thing is to make sure there is little to no wear in the upper pocket, or the nylon bushings will eventually work there way out (this happened to my first set). I had them rebuild with the solid upper bushing and have had no problems.

My car is slowly turning into a track car (though its not intentional) and the Racer's Edge arms will be one of the top priorities.

Dave in Chicago

The "Charlie Arms" have a 19mm (versus 17mm stock) pin in them...

Perhaps they are onto something.

Travis - sflraver

We offer rebuild kits for the stock control arms with 19mm pins for those that want added security. They come in standard and extended length and come packaged with the solid internal bushings only. They are beefier than the 17mm versions but they require the spindles to be machined. We offer that service as well for $100 a pair plus s/h.
It's a good intermediate setup if you think you may go to something like the Charlie arms some day. If you ever do your spindles are already setup for the 19mm pins and they become a drop in replacement.

Also, on a side note, the majority of pin failures at the groove are not due to the pins but the pinch bolts. This is one reason we include 10.9 grade pinch bolts with all of our kits that use new ball pins.