Ebay Uniball UCAs (WARNING w/pics)

[Jetboy]

In case anyone else was wondering, like I was, that doesn't happen to have a spare misalignment spacer handy... Here's what a Total Chaos spacer's cross section looks like.

That looks exactly like what i have. Is the TC version aluminum? Dirt King has stainless sets for about $100 that might be a reasonable upgrade for the TC ones if it's a concern. The ebay ones have a lot of positive review among tacoma folks, so I'm wondering if they've recently changed to aluminum from stainless.

 

[Jeremy556]

That looks exactly like what i have. Is the TC version aluminum? Dirt King has stainless sets for about $100 that might be a reasonable upgrade for the TC ones if it's a concern. The ebay ones have a lot of positive review among tacoma folks, so I'm wondering if they've recently changed to aluminum from stainless.

Stainless. After looking up TC's site, they are heat treated 17-4 stainless.

Agreed on the 4130 being silly for this application.

 

[Jono.ful]

That looks exactly like what i have. Is the TC version aluminum? Dirt King has stainless sets for about $100 that might be a reasonable upgrade for the TC ones if it's a concern. The ebay ones have a lot of positive review among tacoma folks, so I'm wondering if they've recently changed to aluminum from stainless.

I just posted the link for the tc misalignment spacers I my last response. I just changed one not more than 3 weeks ago, they're from f&k, they come in an f&k bag, with an f&k part number printed right on it.

 

[Brandonium]

I know we all work within different budgets but I could never buy chinese or any other type of knock off to save $300..especially with suspension and safety components. I'd just wait until I could save another $300 and do it right and possibly not kill people on the road (including yourself).

I carry too many valuables including my woman and my pups to risk anything. That being said, you are lucky as you could have been in a situation where you were posting this from a hospital bed..or worse.

 

[CruzadoBlanco]

honestly i run the same arms and wheel the ever loving piss out of them along with a ton of the 3rd and 4th gen guys. Ive not had a single issue with mine, they do get maintained very regularly however. hell i had a factory LOWER ball joint fail on me in the parking lot on campus last year. S**t happens, atleast it wasnt at highway speed and no one was hurt

 

[Engineer]

[MENTION=118321]Jetboy[/MENTION] ,

Thanks for sharing, I am sure this will help steer people in the right direction. I do see where you were coming from though on the original purchase, the price for some of this stuff is extreme but low volume products do typically dictate that.

 

[Jetboy]

honestly i run the same arms and wheel the ever loving piss out of them along with a ton of the 3rd and 4th gen guys. Ive not had a single issue with mine, they do get maintained very regularly however. hell i had a factory LOWER ball joint fail on me in the parking lot on campus last year. S**t happens, atleast it wasnt at highway speed and no one was hurt

This is my general thought on it. Based on the experience of quite a few reviews I went with these ones. There are still people who think only Warn winches are worth owning too. Of course people said the same thing about japanese products not too long ago too.

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0FzTAsVuQuw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I figure if you can do this, they should be good enough for my use.
<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gk8ekLq2LFA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

They've fixed the fitment issues. But, obviously the parts I happened to get were dangerous. And I should have recognized the spacers were cast aluminum and not adequate for the clamping force of the bolt. That's on me. Part of the reason I feel comfortable buying these is because I could build my own pretty easily, and this was basically a time savings more than anything else. I probably should have just built my own.

 

[Jetboy]

I just posted the link for the tc misalignment spacers I my last response. I just changed one not more than 3 weeks ago, they're from f&k, they come in an f&k bag, with an f&k part number printed right on it.

Thanks - and I appreciate the knowledge from you and others to clearly show that they are not total chaos arms. I had suspected they were. Side by side they are obviously a knockoff, but pretty clearly not the same quality as the TC products.

Now I'm thinking about whether to keep them and replace the misalignment with quality F&K ones or just send them back and cut my losses. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the seller cover the cost of the replacement parts for the brakes either, but I'm not very optimistic about that happening.

 

[Runn4est]

Looks like a couple beat me to it, but now that I've joined the 4th gen world, I also noticed that a bunch of 4th gen guys run these pretty successfully. The only thing I've heard on the QC level was the bushings being wider than the tube so they pinch and tear. Many people just bought the AllPro bushings as replacements and never had the issue. I've also heard of people swapping the spacers. Doing that still brings you in below some of the lower cost name brand UCAs.

I don't personally have these to know how true all of the claims are.

 

[Knight-Errant]

The Chinese broadly speaking aren't 't very good when it comes to precision work and generally speaking they're really sloppy when it comes to welding.

You can buy lots of excellent things from Taiwan because they've invested in precision and quality manufacturing. Generally quality bicycles come from Taiwan, budget bikes from China, and its known in the bike industry that the Chinese welds are pretty sloppy. If you buy wrenches anything Taiwanese made is usually excellent, you can visually see the Chinese wrenches are poorly designed. I have Taiwanese and Chinese Kobalt wrenches from lowes and the Chinese ones terrible.

As for iphones, most of the chips and electronics come from the US, Taiwan, Korea, and Europe and they're only assembled in china. Again China is really bad at making anything complex, but they have cheap labor that is used to assemble the final product.

China is pretty much known for cheap replica knock-offs that will fail and they corners are cut on the material quality. It isn't just labor cost, Chinese factory managers constantly substitute sub-standard materials to boost their own profits on the contract. How many time do you ready about food factories in China adding random stuff to food to add to the bulk? There is a reason why Chinese cars aren't sold in the US yet, they just don't even come close to US safety and emissions standards, and that comes down to poor engineering and poor material quality.

Saying that the Chinese UCAs looks like total chaos doesn't mean in any way that it will perform like total chaos.

 

[GzTEP]

Yikes.

 

[Knight-Errant]

Of course people said the same thing about japanese products not too long ago too.

The difference being that Japanese products were actually really good, and lots of people didn't like them for a variety of reasons (some people were just plain racist; some people fought in WWII and after going though that couldn't bring themselves to buy a Japanese product, some people just feel strongly about supporting American workers).

Korean cars were horrible in the 80s and 90s and now they are now decent but they really had to step it up to get there.

Chinese stuff is still generally poor quality.

 

[dkyleb]

So, uh, who says these are made in China anyways? You all are assuming.


OP, it sucks that you experienced a failure like this! It could have been extremely dangerous. I think I'll be inspecting my uniballs right away.

 

[dkyleb]

Yep. And yep to the brake line too. I'm also going to need a new ABS sensor wire. I spliced it for a temporary fix.

Just wondering, it wasn't too clear in your original post, but did the bolt actually pull through the joint and the last two pictures in your original post is what happened? Or did it feel funny, so you pulled it apart?

 

[BlackWorksInc]

So, uh, who says these are made in China anyways? You all are assuming.


OP, it sucks that you experienced a failure like this! It could have been extremely dangerous. I think I'll be inspecting my uniballs right away.

They're most likely not made in the US and even if they were, they could still simply be "assembled in the US." I agree with you that it's hard to say they're from China, but realistically speaking; they seem to be no-name parts with questionable sellers on Ebay, if 4WheelParts isn't even touching them (and they're like the Autzone of the off-road world) then there may be some truth to the China comment. My guess is that the Chinesium is strong in these.

 

[dkyleb]

They're most likely not made in the US and even if they were, they could still simply be "assembled in the US." I agree with you that it's hard to say they're from China, but realistically speaking; they seem to be no-name parts with questionable sellers on Ebay, if 4WheelParts isn't even touching them (and they're like the Autzone of the off-road world) then there may be some truth to the China comment. My guess is that the Chinesium is strong in these.

In the end, it's still just guessing. And that's what you pay for with TC, JBA, etc upper control arms is the confidence in the product! But I'm a cheap ******* and can't believe companies like TC, Camburg, ProComp, JBA, etc think a UCA should cost $600+!!

 

[BlackWorksInc]

In the end, it's still just guessing. And that's what you pay for with TC, JBA, etc upper control arms is the confidence in the product! But I'm a cheap ******* and can't believe companies like TC, Camburg, ProComp, JBA, etc think a UCA should cost $600+!!

Trust me I understand, I just bought a set of Camburg Kinetiks. I know that about $600 of that price is because their billet and yet for $1300 they can't make the camber adjustable while installed. lol

 

[dkyleb]

Trust me I understand, I just bought a set of Camburg Kinetiks. I know that about $600 of that price is because their billet and yet for $1300 they can't make the camber adjustable while installed. lol

That's different. If someone wants to spend that much on a billet arm, you're actually getting what you pay for. That piece actually takes time to make. As people have pointed out in this thread, a monkey with a MIG gun and a jig could pound out 30 of the typical tubular arms in a day.


I still think billet arms are a bit overkill though!

 

[BlackWorksInc]

That's different. If someone wants to spend that much on a billet arm, you're actually getting what you pay for. That piece actually takes time to make. As people have pointed out in this thread, a monkey with a MIG gun and a jig could pound out 30 of the typical tubular arms in a day.


I still think billet arms are a bit overkill though!

So do I, but the guaranteed 5~5.5 degrees of caster, ridiculously beefy heims (larger than Icon's Billet arms) and fairly good engineering are what I need right now for my build. The SPCs I had on their before the accident were good, but I think they were getting to their limit with the 35's. Also since the insurance check covered mostly everything I'm only out of pocket about $200~300 for the UCAs.

 

[dkyleb]

So do I, but the guaranteed 5~5.5 degrees of caster, ridiculously beefy heims (larger than Icon's Billet arms) and fairly good engineering are what I need right now for my build. The SPCs I had on their before the accident were good, but I think they were getting to their limit with the 35's. Also since the insurance check covered mostly everything I'm only out of pocket about $200~300 for the UCAs.

I agree, they look badass and will perform like it, too! Because you're getting what you're paying for. Unlike the $600+ tubular UCAs.

So check this out:

https://camburg.com/shop/suspension/susp-tools-maint/1-25-uca-hardware-kit/

$320 for replacement hardware for the UCAs! WTF Camburg?! That's how you know they're deliberately ripping people off.

Uniballs: $45
Misalignment Spacers: $40
Snap Rings: $1.50
Bushings: $50
Sleeves: $25
Lube:$2.50


So that's $164.00, even at my generous non-wholesale pricing! WTF?