Trucho-951

Hey guys, great discussion on the use of extended ball joint pins. I just wanted to add that TonyG had posted some pics of his modified suspension setup, it included a "compression spacer" between the spindle and the controll arm to sort of "craddle" the extended pin and help minimize bending stresses in the ball joint pin.

Oops. Daigo beat me to it.

daigo

Yes, this is our setup. We still need to address the bumpsteer issue.

sawood12

OK,i'm worried again! Can we put this into some sort of context. Accepting that for race cars the extended pin with stock A-arms is not a robust solution, can we agree that for prodominantly lowered street cars that do the odd trackday the extended pin solution is adequate (i.e. safe) if not ideal from a suspension performance angle?

It seems to me that lowering the car without modifying the ball joint is a no-no as you are basically guaranteed a failure at some point.

Also why is it that Porsche have not modified the ball joints on cars that are fitted with M030 struts? Seems a bit of an oversight that they fit height adjustable suspension but not A-arms that can work with them through the entire range of adjustment. I know M030 A-Arms have a different part number, but so far all I can tell is that they just have stiffer bushes and the ball joint itself is the same so are exposed to the same problem(?).

It's a shame that the chap who makes the Charlie Arms cannot get his manufacturing costs down a bit. I can't help feeling that if the costs of those babies could come down a bit then there would be a significant increase in orders.

anders44

a low car for street is useless imho.

isn't m030 useing a 19mm balljoint? or am I mixing the stuff again.

Papamurphdog

I'm suprised no one has mentioned the steering rack kit. I'll have to dig up the URL but there is a bracket kit for moving the rack itself so the tie rods are more inline on a lowered car. I have an "early" car and I am looking into procuring steel early a-arms and "boxing" them for strength, then I can replace ball joints whenever needed. I'll then employ a combo of moving the rack first and adjusting pin hights last, if at all.

Papamurphdog

A low car for the street looks AWESOME, which is still "useful" IMO!

anders44

:|

let's face it, 944 are kinda ugly, no matter how low. you need to widen them, put a splitter on race wheels etc then they look better. but chicks still prefer my boxster when we go out.. over the beemer, the 944 or the evo, eventhough the boxster is way cheaper than any of the other cars

Papamurphdog

Ladies like my stock 944 S2 Cabriolet way better than the Turbo. "Race chicks" like the Turbo much better.

Oddjob

The only difference between the 944/951 M030 alum arms and regular is the durometer of the rubber bushing. The Cup/Club Sport/Motorsport arms did have a different balljoint post. The groove for the pinch bolt was a slot on one side only, not the full cirumference of the pin (as on the production/stock arms). Why this was not upgraded on all arms, I dont know - seems like they should have used this type pin on the later 968 arms. All are 17mm, no factory arm has a larger diameter pin.

There was a tech service notice that porsche sent out years ago, that stated cars used for auto-x and DE's should ensure that the balljoints are in good condition and replace with the 968 arms (only ones still available for late offset cars) if needed; and cars that were heavily DE'd and raced should upgrade to the motorsport arms. But Im fairly certain that the motorsport arms are long gone.

The balljoint failure concern is mostly (nearly entirely?) a track car issue - you wont have much problem with a street car.

If you dont lower your car well beyond european ride height, and you stay off of curbing/rumble strips when the suspension is fully loaded (in a corner), you wont be binding the balljoints.

I DE'd and raced 944s for 14 years on stock factory arms. I had one balljoint failure on track: spun out and the passenger side front wheel hit trackside curbing sliding sideways. Impact was absorbed by the a-arm and the balljoint bushings were shattered. Not a catastrophic failure - the pin didnt break and the ball didnt pop out of the socket, but it was shot. Joint had big play in it and it would pop when making turns in the paddock. No doubt it would have broke in a big/bad way if I were to continue driving the car on track.

Im not a fan of any of the aftermarket pin/rebuild kits (short, extended, 17mm, 19mm, various bushing types, etc). No personal experience, but I would never have used a rebuilt arm on my track cars. I replaced several arms with factory new (which were 968 arms at the time) and have also used a set of the motorsport/turbo cup arms. I did finally switch over to fabcar arms, but have since learned of a couple fabcar pin failures - so Im a little uncertain that it was a wise move. Charlie arms were impossible to find a couple years ago, RE arms were not available yet, and eitherway Im still not crazy about boring out (weakening) the spindles for the 19mm pins.

anders44

imho the BEST solution would be new spindles, with the wheel further up. the mx5 guys has theese available for the low race/track cars.

any idea what a custom spindle would cost?

should be an easy product to sell, seeing as then a arms won't be an issue any more.

Scootin159

+1

Lorax

Very good info guys, thanks allot!

There has to be info on custom spindles out there, surely some big $$$ racers have been doing this for years now, right?

Lorax

Well... so is having 400rwhp but allot of people want to do that anyway.

sawood12

So how are 968 arms different? do they have a larger dia ball joint?

Lowered cars for street - depends what you're after. I wanted a car that drove well on the street and well on the handfull of trackdays I plan to do each year - so it's lowered with KW. Works fine for my application - maybe apart from the a-arm!

PorscheDude1

Modified spindles are very popular in the sport truck world.

Contact someone like belltech