I think the front arms are fragile for a reason: to keep from breaking other connected parts that are harder to replace!
My buddy just recently went through 2 front bulkheads (litteraly one after the other) after having a frontal impact. How and why the front a-arms didn't break (they were fine, the hinge pin holder on the bulkhead broke instead) is a complete mistery! But if the arms were stronger, the bulkhead would take more of the hit and break more often. And changing the bulkhead is much more complicated/ longer. Same goes with the shock tower I guess; stronger means more stress on the other parts...
Anyways, by far the most fragile parts on the car are the front arms and shock shafts!
CODMAN
Originally Posted by
tom_chang79
The two parts I break the most often are the front suspension arms and the front shock shaft. They are both directly in the line of fire (assuming your car is going forward
)...
As for the front shock tower, you can prevent them from breaking by taking two of them and gluing them together with some CA. By doubling it up, I have yet to break one on my B44. I've done this same trick on the BJ4WE and I have never had any issue with them.
I've yet to break any rear arms, but this past weekend, I have managed to crack my rear shock tower. The eyelet of one of the wing mounts snapped off causing my rear wing to rotate about the other eyelet by 90-degrees. Without the wing fully secure, the rear shock tower becomes very vulnerable.
I've been thinking of ways to double this one up as well. I think the top shock bushing of the rear shocks will have to be adjusted (cut down) accordingly to double up the rear shock tower. Don't forget, anytime you double up on the towers, you'll have to go to a longer thread for the bolts. The shock towers are 3mm I believe, so adjust your new length of the bolts accordingly.
Replacing shock towers can get quite expensive ($20 a pop). I'm wondering if anyone out there have a plastic solution. I think a plastic solution would be a lot better since they are so much cheaper to do. I also think it would be nice if someone released a solid front arm, instead of being latticed. I'll take that extra weight over vulnerability any day. I think the weight savings of the latticed structure is negligible if you can prevent it from breaking and finishing your race!
