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Just a heads up for everyone. I have a 2003 C2 Cab. I tried to save some money and bought the EPS lower control arms with the polyurethane bushings. Installed them in April and had one snap at the head today. Luckily I was a block from my house when it happened. Now I’m going to do what I should have done in the first place, buy the OEM arms.
I’ve been running them on my car for 4 years - no problems. Just because a (1) part fails it doesn’t mean it’s a bad design. If there are a rash of failures, that’s a different story. More likely it was a defective/damaged part before you installed it, or it wasn’t installed/torqued properly (not sure if that would cause it to break though)... in any case, glad there was no other bad result...👍
I’ve been running them on my car for 4 years - no problems. Just because a (1) part fails it doesn’t mean it’s a bad design. If there are a rash of failures, that’s a different story. More likely it was a defective/damaged part before you installed it, or it wasn’t installed/torqued properly (not sure if that would cause it to break though)... in any case, glad there was no other bad result...👍
I followed the torque values in the service manual. You are probably right that it was a defective part. It happens. They do have a five year warranty, but I’m a little worried about it now. Just going to replace both with OEM and be done with it.
I don't blame you - it's not like the oem arms are crazy expensive or anything! I'm sure EPS/Vertex will replace it, as it's pretty obvious it was defective. Good luck
um - you're talking the trailing arm? oem arms have solid bushings in there, eps have poly which allow more movement than suspension designed for. i would suggest design flaw.
um - you're talking the trailing arm? oem arms have solid bushings in there, eps have poly which allow more movement than suspension designed for. i would suggest design flaw.
They are talking about the diagonal control arms, or "tuning forks".The OEM have integral Heim Joints, the EPS has a poly bushing...
um - you're talking the trailing arm? oem arms have solid bushings in there, eps have poly which allow more movement than suspension designed for. i would suggest design flaw.
If it was a design flaw, I’m sure that many more would be breaking. And the oem arms (“tuning fork/ lower control arms” not trailing arms) do not have “solid bushings in them”...
If it was a design flaw, I’m sure that many more would be breaking. And the oem arms (“tuning fork/ lower control arms” not trailing arms) do not have “solid bushings in them”...
ok, here we go ...
not a design flaw because only one has broken? for every broken arm reported on the internet, how many have actually broken - 10? 100? 1000? how may eps arms have been sold? 10? 100? 1000? perhaps every single arm of the 10 sold have broken and we have only heard about one? perhaps not. what i do know is that the oem arms do not break. i am sure a few have, but i also know MILLIONS have been sold. imaging the lawsuits if there was even a 1% failure rate (broken suspension component at 100 mph?)?
not a trailing arm? well, here is a link to the exact same component that does the exact same thing only on a boxster. what does eps call it ... a trailing arm:
oem is not a solid bushing? here is a link to the video from eps about their product where they discuss the oem plastic bushing used (albeit as a lining to a ... heim joint; points to pt3 in the semantic battle, as well as the range of motion bit - i got it backwards ...):
Not street, but I've seen many more than one BMW and Porsche arm fail with track use...
typically they don't fail catastrophically you just start seeing cracks..
The most notable ones are the M3/M5 Aluminum arms..
um - you're talking the trailing arm? oem arms have solid bushings in there, eps have poly which allow more movement than suspension designed for. i would suggest design flaw.
From the video you've shown it looks like the OEM bushing actually allows for a lot more movement than the EPS 'upgrade', the latter not being able to move much at all, and 'springing' in directions the original part was not intended to produce forces in.
Due to that poly bushing introducing significant resistance in directions the original suspension was not designed to resist, the arm will be continuously laterally loaded, more so with every bump. It's like they completely deviated from the original concept of that part, just so they could stick some colored poly in for extra $$. I'm not surprised it broke.
That video scares me...completely different function between designs. Heim joints (OEM) are used when clevis joints don't provide enough degrees of freedom through the range of motion. I would stick with how Porsche engineers designed it...their engineers are pretty good from what I hear.
08-25-2019, 11:56 PM
EPS Control arm snapped
