Throughout the ages, the universe has blessed me with the chance to peer into the deep selection of aftermarket suspension arms. Truly, some appear to have been designed thoughtfully with a great deal of care, while others… not so much. Some brands from hell seem to greatly market sub-par products, while others contribute the highest quality to the world.
Nicolette was an old co-worker back in my days at Tanabe; here is her 370Z and tonight’s project of aligning it the best I could, despite the mix of good and bad suspension pieces.
Firstly, in her defense, Nicolette purchased a car that came with these parts already installed — a curse and a blessing. It was a mix of Z1 arms plus something else. The Z1 parts (black arms) seemed proper — beefy, and the adjustability was decently easy.
However, some of the other brand (the silver arms) thoughtlessly didn’t facilitate a way to make adjustments while bolted to the car. Instead, one would be expected to painstakingly unbolt the arms to make a semi-blind adjustment — far from ideal… unless there’s something I’m missing here. Perhaps I’m the blind one! I’m open to the idea that there’s always something new to learn, and at this moment I had no idea why anyone would design an adjustable arm this way.
For example, check out adjustment point of the front upper arm (circled in red). It has one bolt to lock and unlock the threaded portion of the arm. But one can’t physically twist the thread without unbolting the upper arm from the spindle arm. What a troll design!
While steering clear of that nonsense, I was at least able to even-out the car, minus the front camber. I’m 100% comfortable with telling a person that they’ve got to have quality parts for me to do a quality job. There’s no doubt that someone out there would be willing to work with such troublesome items, but that person ain’t me.
Parts like this are straight-up offensive. It would be like microwaving food 3 seconds at a time until it’s warm enough. Like, who does that?? Alas, not Nicolette’s fault — the car just came this way.
Here were the final numbers for the day. Nicolette came back a 2nd time, replacing the rear unknown-brand arms with Z1 arms which gave me much more room to get the camber numbers more positive. In case anyone was wondering, at the time of this writing, the easiest arms to adjust that I know of are the ones made by SPL Parts. PBM is ok too except I feel like they of over-do it with the excessive locking mechanisms. And then there are of course the other decent ones made by companies like Cusco etc. I haven’t seen many Ikeya Formula arms, but those ones are of top quality too.
If you’re thinking of getting some adjustable suspension parts before coming to yours truly for an alignment, you’re always welcome to ask for some recommendations. Feel free to reach out anytime!
