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Thread: VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY WARNING! - Camskill Lower Suspension Arms

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    Exclamation VERY IMPORTANT SAFETY WARNING! - Camskill Lower Suspension Arms

    This is very serious.

    On the way home from work this evening turning right off the main A90 road in rush hour to head down to newburgh down the A975.

    Had complete failure of the ball joint ( the metal below the tapered shaft snapped) on the lower arm on ther drivers side.

    This caused the wheel to pivot on the upper (boomerang shaped) arm and swing the complete wheel around into the wheel arch.. this then ripped the inner CV joint from the transmission, so i lost drive and steering.

    I was only doing 10mph and somehow manged to drive fwd enough to clear the oncoming 60mph traffic (before the inner cv joint came out i guess)

    i managed to jack the car up, remove the wheel then tie the lower arm to the hub with rope so i could get it onto the reovery truck.

    i am currently very tired and very very p!ssed off.... this story could have very easily ended so much worse....

    I just could not live with myself i did not post this warning and someone else has the same happen. this happening with increase speed and in different circumstances does not bear thinking about.

    I believe the ball joint was overly tight/stiff in its socket and the torque from the steering has eventually, through fatigue stress, cause catastrophic failure.

    Be warned. if your steering is stiff get it sorted.

    I will never be using non main dealer suspension arms on my cars again.

    Right, i need a stiff drink.

    DanG

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    Kieran's Avatar

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    Jesus Christ..... Glad you're okay. Yes, go get yourself a wee Dram!

    When you're feeling a little less shaken up (perhaps not now!!!) It might be worth reporting this to Camskill.... There's been concerns over the quality of these arms before.

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    Bloody hell Dan .Glad to hear your OK .Could have been a lot worse if it had happened at speed. Has the wing been damaged ?

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    oh my god!

    glad you are ok,
    so it was the actual shaft that comes out of the ball joint and attaches to the hub carrier that snapt or was it the actual arm by the ball joint. thats an odd one. i have never heard of that before and from the sound of it i never want to here of it again.
    How long did you have the lower arms fitted on you car. are they still under 1 year garentee.

    i say again i am glad you are ok, you must have been shaken up.

    Bye for Now!

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    So glad you are OK.

    Once you have recovered from the shock, get an independent engineers report on the damage so you have all the evidence required to make an informed decision on where to lay the blame.

    I do hope you get it sorted quickly and without too much hassle.
    '97 Manual Legnum in silver with some subtle mods

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    Feck.

    Bad news. The end of your story could have been much worse. I guess you don't feel lucky at the moment, but you should probably consider yourself as such!

    Hope you get it all sorted relatively painlessly.

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    The arm has been on the car for less than 3000 miles, and has been stiff since fitting.

    I was already going to order new arms from mitsu this week as i was not happy with them, guess i was'nt quick enough.

    the wing is slightly bent where the wheel has hit it.. the inner plastic wheel arch was ripped off and the wheel hit the bulkhead€ and bent the seam... think the lower part of the bodykit is slightly damaged too.

    suppose i could get an independant engineer report, but I'm pretty sure i know the cause of the failure already. I hope I remmember enough of my Metallurgy & materials course to i.d. the mode of failure... (the mode was what us engineers call a bad mode, )

    the bit that failed was the shaft that joins to the hub carrier right after the ball before the tappered section and threads.

    and I do feel VERY lucky.. and because of that I am not overly worked up about the damage...

    Dan

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    Gawd Dan ........ you are SOOOOO lucky it wasn't at high speed - thank god it went at that moment and that you are OK pal.
    RIP: Richard (Physician)

    Bog standard silver VR4 except a decat pipe and quad exhaust outlets.

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    So can you see the striations from the fatigue? I guess that is something that will leave no doubt.

    I'd keep the bits until you have a satisfactory claim. If you don't, I know some people with a SEM.......

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    Unhappy

    Quote Originally Posted by Nick Mann
    So can you see the striations from the fatigue? I guess that is something that will leave no doubt.

    I'd keep the bits until you have a satisfactory claim. If you don't, I know some people with a SEM.......
    ...

    dont think i want to make a claim... they'll probly write the car off its worth so little!...

    and as for striations... i'm not so sure i will see them even it was'nt dark and i had my glasses on!.. i certainly will need that electron microscope...

    its definatley broken, and went with a bang.... its a shear dissapointment... not good crack at all...

    i'm actually really upset... i'm now off to cry myself to sleep...

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    bloody hell you are lucky mate!

    my mate had the same thing happen on hhis altezza. it came apart on the motorway!!! luckly he was in the slow lane and nothing bad happened.

    the scary thing was, i service it the week before and check everything and it was ok. and then went for a wof a couple of pays before i happened and they were ok. he event saw them check them!

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    Sorry to hear about this, let Camskill know ASAP and hoprfully they will have enough sense to hold off selling any more before the matter is resolved.
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    Holy cow! Having seen a very similar failure to this on a VR4 in the last week, and having fitted quite a few of these arms ourselves i took the liberty of speaking to Mike at Camskill about this issue this morning.

    We have used Camskill lower arms with no issues reported for some time, i was actually quite surprised to see people suggesting they were maybe not up to scratch. Mike is 100% sure that they are identical to OE lower arms, and is after our conversation this morning going to get a set of genuine OE arms so that he can a) offer those for sale and b) see if there is any difference or not. He also said he has never had any problems with the arms, save for one that squeaked reported to them in all the time that they have sold them.

    He said he would post up any pictures he gets too whether different or not.

    Meantime, to any of our customers who have camskill lower arms fitted by us, we will swap the arms to OE for the price of the arms only (ie no labour charge) if they would like.

    Cheers,

    Ben.

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    Top notch offer there Ben


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    mmm. Glad you're ok, Dan. Gingernut, Yokel Boy and I have been crowing on about non-mitsi arms for a while now, but I don't think any of us expected such a catastrophic failure.

    I think this should be stickied. If I've got time, and remember to do it, I'll link the other discussions to this thread (or perhaps one of the committee jonnies could do it?).
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    just to clear things up, is this offer?


    Meantime, to any of our customers who have camskill lower arms fitted by us, we will swap the arms to OE for the price of the arms only (ie no labour charge) if they would like.

    from Eurospec or camskill?



    also are these the same arms that are fitted on the recall
    Last edited by ANTHONY; 15-01-2008 at 06:02 PM.
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    glad to hear you're ok, due to the slow speed, bugger about the damage, someone should be held liable, a suspension part should not fail in less than 3000 miles !!
    I'm about to get one side of mine changed next week and price wise was tempted to with camskill part, but ordered a genuine one last friday.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anthony
    just to clear thing up is this offer


    Meantime, to any of our customers who have camskill lower arms fitted by us, we will swap the arms to OE for the price of the arms only (ie no labour charge) if they would like.

    from Eurospec or camskill



    also are these the same arms that are fitted on the recall
    Hi Tony,

    We are offering to any of our customers that have had Camskill Arms fitted by us, that we will fit OE arms for the price of the arms.

    Basically we take stuff like this seriously and we know it worries customers so we called camskill ourselves (well i did!) and told them about this failure, plus one which was recovered to us last week with a very similar failure (it had ripped the ball joint out of the nut).

    Having spoken to Mike at length this morning he is confident that the arms they supply are fine, but he is going to check them out and will tell us the results of what he finds. We've worked with Camskill for years and they are a good bunch. If he says he will, i'm sure he will.

    Since i know we have done quite a few sets recently, i thought we should offer to switch them for people if they were worried.

    The arms originally fitted by Mitsu at the factory are the ones that are the subject of the recall and it is this same lower straight arm.

    Cheers,

    Ben.

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    cheers Ben

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    Quote Originally Posted by benh
    He also said he has never had any problems with the arms, save for one that squeaked reported to them in all the time that they have sold them.
    not digging at you ben so don't worry, btw cracking offer you have made there .

    matey from camskill is talking complete and utter horlicks, i reported a pair with seized joints about 10 months ago, they seemed unwilling to help so i sorted it out my self with some oe dust seals and some grease nipples and so far they are acceptable, not perfect by anyway but for the little use it gets they will do for the mo. if matey says other wise i have all the e-mails somewhere about it.

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