Skip Wolfe

Chris,

I for one am not in favor of somone "stealing" Charlies design. Also his bars are a work of art and I don't doubt that they are fairly expensive to make since they are fairly machining intensive. What I would like to see are a nice set of turbular a arms like those avaliable for a lot of the mainstream cars at a <$1,000 price.

Here is a great example of a race control arm for a Focus for $329/pair:

smokey

Markus Blaszac makes two types of control arms: a reinforced early steel one for the short offset type, and a square tube fabricated one for the long offset ones. You can check them out at www.geocities.com/blaszak_precision. No affiliation, just a satisfied customer. He can add the tabs to mount the 968 M030 brake cooling ducts.

951Racer

Wow, interesting transition from how this thread started. To clarify one thing, I am not selling Charlie arms in general but I know someone with a single set of early offset arms that he is willing to sell. Alan gets them if he wants them and I can get them in time.

I have heard people say that the Charlie arms are great products but there is a potential flaw in the area where the sway bar mounts onto the arms. I have never verified this claim and indeed have a set on my car with no issues.

Folks like Lindsey Racing have created Steel/Chrome Moly versions of these arms with success. They are just as light and probably stronger, although they may have canned the project because I could not find a reference on their web site.

Paul Foster

I just wanted to chime in here by saying I'm more than happy with my Fabcar arms which have been on my 951S for about 5 years now. I don't drive the car that much anymore but I commuted an hour a day for a year with no problems. I think I'll replace the ball joints before going out on the track again but that's just being safe.

Russ Murphy

Quote: I keep praying that an opportunistic fabricator will come out with a low cost replacement arm. You can buy tubular competition arms for cars like Hondas for $500 pair. While I understand that the 944 series arms are a lower volume gig, it still seems like there would be plenty of money to be made since I have to believe just about every 944 owner out there would buy them as replacements @ $500 pair rather than having the stock one rebuilt at $300 - $400 pair.

I thought I saw on the Kokeln/Vision site that they were in the midst of developing cro-moly arms. I wonder when and how much?

TurboTim

I dont want to let the cat out of the bag but we have been working on some arms out of chrome-moly that are fully TIG welded. They use .120 wall chrome-moly with gussets were all the tubes meet. We are using a replacable ball joint along with some other cool tricks. I am more then certain that we can deliver a top qaulity product for under $900 a set. This would also include powder coating, new hardware, and billet aluminum caster blocks. Any interest?

Skip Wolfe

Tim,

You are exactly the guy I was thinking about when I referenced "an opportunistic fabricator". Of any of the 944 tuners out there you seem to have the most experience/ability in welding intensive fabrication and this project really seems to be right down your alley. I would definitely be interested and if you need a Beta tester - I am your man (with the appropriate discount of course ; ' )

Sean Hall

Skip, et al
The sale price for the set of arms I spoke of above is targeted at less than 500 for the set... that should help put things into perspective.

again, does anyone have a set of early arms laying around?

Thanks,

Sean

Skip Wolfe

Sean,

Sounds great but I would need a late offset arm. I do have one late offset arm laying around - let me know.

Dan Gallagher

you guys keep saying the honda, focus, insert cheap car here has the parts cheaper...... lets not forget you are driving a porsche

Skip Wolfe

Unfortunately I am reminded that I am driving a Porsche every time a buy parts. I really don't think that the parts for the Sport Compact Cars (SCC) such as Hondas or Focuses are cheaper because they are of poor quality for a cheapo car, they are cheaper purely because of volume. Lets face it our cars are niche cars relatively speaking and consequently we pay through the nose for limited production run parts. The picture of the arm I posted above is for road race and rally purposes, and there no way you can convince me that the stresses that they receive on a Focus in a rally environment are less than a 944 in a road race environment.

Mike Buck

I'm definately interested. If the quality is anything like the exhaust components I bought, we are in for a treat.

adrial

OH, sure, after I spend $1050 on some used fabcar arms everybody starts coming out with sub $1000 a-arms...

2+2

Are the M030 arms of the 951-S any different than the 951???

Asahi

I'm trying to locate Charlie arms for my 1986 944 Turbo but to no avail. I have been calling around but no one seems to have them. Are the Charlie arms still available for a 1986 944 Turbo?