Decambered Ball Joints Reliability?

[c4srojo]

I am looking to add -.15 for a total of 03 degree of camber in the front for an 84 911 track car. All I can get out of the stock setup is 1.5. I am looking at the Elephant Racing De-cambered ball joint along with the quick adjust camber plates. Has anyone used this set up? Has it been effective? Any failures? Are you happy with the quality of the parts? Tarrett Engineering (which are the sways that I have f/r are really high quality and they make similar parts but are a bit more expensive. I haven't used anything from Elephant before and would appreciate any insights.

Thanks!

[na2ub]

From what I understand, all of Elephants products are top notch and track tested. Don't know about the max camber, though.

[175K911]

Everything from Elephant and Tarett are first rate parts. Can't go wrong with either of them

[mpeastend]

premature post

[Chuck Moreland]

Mpeastend, the photo is concerning and it is difficult for me to comment since this is the first I’ve heard of this. I would like to learn what happened and the circumstances involved.

Since I don’t know your identity, can I ask you to phone me to discuss at 408 297 2789?

Sharing here the outcome is fine, but a phone call is going to be expedient and productive.

[Flieger]

Originally Posted by mpeastend

Here's one ER balljoint failure:

Were you using bick sticky slicks and braking hard? Was that the driver side?

[mpeastend]

premature post

[Grady Clay]

deleted above.

It sounds like the suspension extremes may have exceed the limit of the joint.
Not using enough negative camber for the joint may be the situation.
From your description, I suspect the damage was prior to the ultimate failure.
Lots of opportunity in ~25 DEs.

Best,
Grady

[Chuck Moreland]

Based on your description alone, I'm sure the actual failure happened before the freeway.

I sincerely want to understand what happened. There are questions to be asked and I would like to inspect the parts. A second-hand account related on a web forum isn't the way to get to the root cause.

Can you ask the car owner to call me?

[175K911]

I agree with Chuck. Posting a failed part without ever having given the manufacturer of the part a call to discuss the failure does a major disservice to the manufacturer as well as all the loyal customers who use these same parts.

That being said, I've always considered ball joint a consumable item, one of the parts I replace every winter after 20+ track days each summer.

[Kroggers]

We are not undertaking a true assessment here either - like Ed points out, the ball joint is a consumable parts and should be replaced and maintained on a regular basses. But with that to one side, how many normal ball joints fail, and have any of them failed in the same way?

I think it is unfair to expect every product from a supplier (even from ER) to last for a lifetime. If this failure was after 7K miles & ~25 DE events, then the problem could be down to a number of things...

I agree, please let Chuck assess this properly with the car owner (an off the board), and post a full report once he knows what happened.

[mpeastend]

premature post

[Mahler9th]

Hopefully the car's owner and Mr. Moreland can connect... hopefully the parts can get back to ER for analysis.

I remember having a couple of 951 factory arm ball joint failures back in the day. They were separated by about 3 weeks. The first was a stock arm. The second was a rebuilt arm by a long time Porsche parts/accessory company that still advertises in the back of the magazines. In the days well before Pelican Parts. Well I contacted the company because I was concerned about their rebuild process and quality control. The failure happened on track and did about $4k worth of damage. I didn't get hurt, but it was a PITA and if I were at Sears Point or Laguna Seca I could have been injured or killed.

The ball pulled right out of the arm. Still have it. Still have the pictures that Jim Pasha took of it for Excellence. Anyway, my purpose in contacting the company was to give them a heads up as they were one of only two companies doing rebuilds and had a great rep with PCA and Porsche street and track drivers. Clearly they made an assembly mistake, and I wanted them to have a chance to correct procedures, materials or whatever. They did not appreciate it, and were very adversarial. I have not done business with them since. It was an awful experience.

Hopefully in this case ER can get the parts and do some study as to what happened. Yes, parts do fail, but if we want to have companies around like ER to make great products for us, it pays to help them refine things over time.

[Chuck Moreland]

Originally Posted by mpeastend

The owner of the car is overseas on business, so I'll have to wait to see if he still has the parts. If he does, I'll send them on my dime, which is the least I can do after pulling Chuck's pants down on the forum.
As far as speaking to the owner, he's over it. He fixed the problem and moved on, he has no interest in speaking to the manufacturer since he's not looking for anything (i.e. new balljoints, damages, etc) from him. I've tried to persuade him to bring it to Chuck's attention, without success (he's a busy guy). Of course I have selfish reasons, I'm concerned because I have the same set on my car.
When I saw this thread & the question of decambered balljoint failure came up, I had the images on my computer...I thought about it, knowing full well there'd be recriminations. It's considered bad form here to put the photos up, I guess because there is a well known name & face connected to the product. I think ER has some excellent products & transparency on the forum isn't necessarily a bad thing. People post photos of failed products from larger manufacturers, Porsche included, without a second thought. If the consensus is that I've overstepped my bounds, I'll edit my posts to delete everything in regards or the admins can do it.
Even if Chuck does examine the items, it would always come down to the uncertain lifespan of parts used in a DE/racing environment, i.e. "you pays your money & takes your chances." I can tell you the balljoints were installed by our DE group & this is the first balljoint failure we've seen, period. Others in the group have been running ER balljoints far longer with no problems. The car had approx 1.7 deg neg camber up front, no unusual caster or toe settings. The owner is a very fast driver, always in the top of the red run group. He's had a few spins & 4 uneventful "offs" over the 3 year life of the balljoints. The drives to the DE events have been unremarkable, no accidents, hitting curbs, monster potholes, etc. He was driving straight, on level ground, when the failure occurred & there was no warning or prior indications. What concerned me the most is that the ball pulled out of the socket the way it did. I've seen quite a few balljoint failures in threads & in real life but it was always the shaft which sheared. I, personally, have never seen this type of failure and would consider it atypical (my opinion only).
The car owner asked the shop owner who swapped out the pair for OEM replacements, if they were installed incorrectly, i.e. did they jump the retaining tab & start rotating on the A-arm. There were no indications that they loosened up or began rotating. I'm sure whatever caused the failure, happened before the drive to the DE event and was waiting for the right combination of steering angle & jolt to get the ball to bounce out of it's retaining socket.
Nobody expects parts to last a lifetime, even the space shuttle has mil-spec part failures. The only thing saving Nasa is a redundancy of critical systems. While it is a consumable item, I don't feel it had reached it's useful life expectancy (personal opinion). I know plenty of people with more miles & DE events on their balljoints with no problems. Are they playing russian roulette, who knows? Unless you're in Club Racing I doubt a $400 wear item is being replaced seasonally without cause.
Bottom line: the ER decambered balljoints on the car failed. Without being there for every bump, off, spin, pothole, braking zone, etc. who is to say if there was abuse or severe use which contributed to the breakage.
Chuck if you still want me to call you I will, but I really can't shed any more light on the incident & the owner is unwilling. If you think these posts are dirty pool, I'm willing to delete my posts & hopefully you can examine the parts and share your thoughts. If they're in the trash, then the posts/pics stay deleted. Let me know.

The product failure raises concern, but doesn't draw a conclusion. It is the circumstances of the failure that tell the story.

Vehicle modifications, impacts, service life, abuse and other variables can cause or contribute to a product failure. Breakage is cause for a thorough
investigation. This may uncover a product problem or perhaps an entirely different root cause. This is why the circumstances are the critical.

Case in point, you've seen several gold-standard factory ball joints fail yourself. Those failures are generally attributable to other factors and not blamed on the ball joint.

You've gotten some blow-back by forum members. That is probably because the manufactuer wasn't contacted. A second-hand account of the
circumstances leaves more questions than answers, and is all there is. Some would feel that publicly posting pictures is premature, and perhaps unfairly asails the product.

[mpeastend]

Chuck, will let you know when/if I get the parts & if they're enroute.

[mpeastend]

Chuck, parts have been thrown out. No inspection possible, sorry.