Charlie Arms are available, there is usually a very long (3 months +) lead time as he makes them in batches. But once again, I do not see why another quality built unit would not work as well, as long as it addresses all of the problems (failures) of the stock units.

As far as the 19mm pins, we had a machine shop bore out the holes just to make certain that there were no problems. I was warned that drilling them could create stress risers or oval shaped holes. For the $50 it cost, it was worth not taking a chance. I don't believe that this weakens the strut at all, and have never heard of the bottom of the strut cracking because of this modification.

 

Charlie arms are the way to go. Have 2 sets. I believe Kokeln or Lindsey also has a set up that might be easier to obtain at this time of year. If you can wait, go for the Charlie's, sometimes you have to wait for fabrication..

 

There is always the new Racers Edge arms. Haven't seen them yet, but the other Racers Edge componentry is well designed so there is no reason to believe these aren't the same quality.

The other thing to do is to call Charlie about how to get his arms. His contact info is:

Wrightwood Racing
805-385-7191

When I called he answered the phone himself.

 

There are two types of pin failures;

1) The car is over lowered. This exceeds the ball joint's axial travel, binds the pin against the ball socket, and creates tremendous stress at the "root" of the pin where it projects from the ball. Bind them enough times and the pin fatigues and snaps off at its base.

2) The hole in the spindle loses its straight and true bore (from over lowering, inproper torque of the bolt, bolt stretch, etc) and actually allows the pin to rock inside the spindle. Usually the bore will increase in size at the bottom. This creates high stress at the keyway relief in the pin, and said pin eventually snaps at the keyway (where the bolt locks the pin in the spindle).

Both the early and late ball joints can fail in this manner. The early arm will NEVER fail from pulling out unless the owner is stupid and NEVER checks them. They are no different than any other ball joint on a normal passenger car, and they do not fail until very high mileage. In this regard, the early arms are essentially bullet proof.

Using an oversize pin IS NOT solving the problem DIRECTLY. It is a band-aid solution. The stresses caused by binding or egg-shaped spindle holes still exist.

The solution is either to not over lower your car, or to build an arm with the ball joint inclined such that it increases the axial range to the outside of the socket.

The next set of arms that I build will incorporate this feature for lowered cars. They will utilize bulletproof early replaceable ball joints.