So this happened...what would you do?

[chris27]

Lots of wild claims going on in here without much information. Nobody knows how this person maintains or treats their truck, nor knows if these were even installed correctly to begin with.

On top of that, SPC has recently updated their arms and you can tell from the photos that these are an old design. The new arms have a completely different construction that was supposed to fix many of it's previous failings.

I think we should stop with the crazy disinformation and hysteria without more information. Lots of people have purchased SPC arms with no problems and one failure doesn't mean anything yet.

 

[chris27]

Good call. So many threads and posts about these arms failing. No idea why anyone buys them anymore. It's like buying the cheap arms on ebay that guys have had fail in a week, some last years. Just not worth the risk.

Why don't you provide links to all of the posts about the CURRENT versions of the SPC arms that are being sold by distributors?

 

[2016 4Runner SR5]

Why don't you provide links to all of the posts about the CURRENT versions of the SPC arms that are being sold by distributors?

Because I don't care enough to waste my time on anything having anything to do with SPC. The fast that they didn't contact EVERY person that bought their defective arms and offer FREE upgraded ball joints is unacceptable. They knew they had issues, big issues, and did NOTHING until after the failures happened. SPC is an arm I would never use, recommend, or install, period.

 

[2016 4Runner SR5]

Lots of wild claims going on in here without much information. Nobody knows how this person maintains or treats their truck, nor knows if these were even installed correctly to begin with.

On top of that, SPC has recently updated their arms and you can tell from the photos that these are an old design. The new arms have a completely different construction that was supposed to fix many of it's previous failings.

I think we should stop with the crazy disinformation and hysteria without more information. Lots of people have purchased SPC arms with no problems and one failure doesn't mean anything yet.

And what has SPC done about all the known faulty and unsafe arms out on the road? Have they reached out to the people that purchased them? No, they wait until something fails and then offer to sell you their upgraded ball joints. Thanks but no thanks, that's not how you run a business. Way to many other arms out there to deal with that. A

Are you the proud owner of some new SPC arms? What is your personal rig built with? You have zero details, no sig, more like maybe an SPC employee?

 

[chris27]

And what has SPC done about all the known faulty and unsafe arms out on the road? Have they reached out to the people that purchased them? No, they wait until something fails and then offer to sell you their upgraded ball joints. Thanks but no thanks, that's not how you run a business. Way to many other arms out there to deal with that. A

Are you the proud owner of some new SPC arms? What is your personal rig built with? You have zero details, no sig, more like maybe an SPC employee?

I just purchased new SPC arms and will install them in the next month or so, this thread isn't stopping me from doing so. I'm not defending them specifically, I'm just trying to prevent mass hysteria over a product from one vocal individual (you). There are going to be people who search for SPC and will find this thread and automatically think they are junk when more than likely thousands of people have them installed with no problems. I just hope that the right information can be spread. Are you going to say the current arms are junk too?

 

[2016 4Runner SR5]

I just purchased new SPC arms and will install them in the next month or so, this thread isn't stopping me from doing so. I'm not defending them specifically, I'm just trying to prevent mass hysteria over a product from one vocal individual (you). There are going to be people who search for SPC and will find this thread and automatically think they are junk when more than likely thousands of people have them installed with no problems. I just hope that the right information can be spread. Are you going to say the current arms are junk too?

Good luck with your new arms is all I will say. People thought the first design was good, they were wrong. There is a known huge issue with their first design. Again, they did nothing to fix the thousands of arms out there waiting for fail. This is by no means isolated to the ball joints. They had weld failures, structural failures, bushing failures, way too much for me. Are their new cast arms going to hold up? Only time will tell. Lets see where yours are in 2-3 years of use.

Just to add to this, this is far from isolated to the Toyota trucks. They had failures like this on sports cars, ricers, just google it like you said. Lots of very unhappy people out there. I will personally never trust them, to many horror stories. Google other brands, yes they have failures, every brand does. Not like SPC though.

 

[bombventure]

Lots of wild claims going on in here without much information. Nobody knows how this person maintains or treats their truck, nor knows if these were even installed correctly to begin with.



On top of that, SPC has recently updated their arms and you can tell from the photos that these are an old design. The new arms have a completely different construction that was supposed to fix many of it's previous failings.



I think we should stop with the crazy disinformation and hysteria without more information. Lots of people have purchased SPC arms with no problems and one failure doesn't mean anything yet.

I’ve seen some very reputable members on here say they wouldn’t trust their products and this is just further proof for me as to why. Yes their new products could be better now but would you really wanna take the chance given the results/outcome of their previous design? That’s like eating at a restaurant that constantly had people reporting food poisoning. I’d take my chances elsewhere. Just some food for thought.

Here’s a couple threads.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/4th-gen-t4rs/197803-spc-uca-failed-today.html

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/3rd-gen-t4rs/167111-spc-upper-control-arms.html


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[jminz]

JBA all the way. Disagree with the above post about bad customer service. Marlin has promptly answered any question I had. They are greaseable and won't break the bank. When my arms were produced the coating they used on the ball joint bracket began to show rust after a few thousand miles. It was a defect but didn't affect the function of the arm. I reached out to Marlin and he provided me a cleaning and polishing kit that remedied the issue free of charge. They have since fixed the issue.

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[wadle5]

Lots of wild claims going on in here without much information. Nobody knows how this person maintains or treats their truck, nor knows if these were even installed correctly to begin with.

On top of that, SPC has recently updated their arms and you can tell from the photos that these are an old design. The new arms have a completely different construction that was supposed to fix many of it's previous failings.

I think we should stop with the crazy disinformation and hysteria without more information. Lots of people have purchased SPC arms with no problems and one failure doesn't mean anything yet.

No wild claims. Historically as numerous threads/post show on here and other forums these things fail prematurely.

Why don't you provide links to all of the posts about the CURRENT versions of the SPC arms that are being sold by distributors?

And what has SPC done about all the known faulty and unsafe arms out on the road? Have they reached out to the people that purchased them? No, they wait until something fails and then offer to sell you their upgraded ball joints. Thanks but no thanks, that's not how you run a business. Way to many other arms out there to deal with that. A

Are you the proud owner of some new SPC arms? What is your personal rig built with? You have zero details, no sig, more like maybe an SPC employee?

I agree with 20164runner. . . .we saw something similar when the GOBI lawsuit unraveled on here. Turns out an employee came in as an “unbiased party” and just tried countering facts. Only to later be found out they had a vested interest. Much like you do [MENTION=202035]chris27[/MENTION] . You bought them and thats fine, but you can’t say there are irrelevant claims being thrown around when this evidence shows a 50k ball joint that has failed?

Good luck with yours, but you cant say the OP doesn’t have a valid concern with how these events unfolded.

 

[Powder_Hound]

Personally I don't like uniball arms and stick to ball joint arms. With that said, Camburg and Dobinson make nice ball joint arms. JBA does as well but there are a few things about them I don't care for. What kinda pushed me away from them is their extreme lack of customer service. I emailed them with a simple question about color options and it took 2 weeks to reply. They come in red and fully assembled or raw steel completely disassembled, same price either way which bothered me a little bit but by no means the end of the world and would not stop me from buying them. Emailed again with a couple other questions about the bolts used to hold the ball joint on and I was ignored. Very bad for business, I'll be shopping elsewhere. The Dirt King arms seem to have good reviews but they don't look as well made as some others. I'm very tossed up between the Camburg arms and Dobinson arms.

I had the same experience with JBL and determined that I would NEVER by their products as I’ve never had a worse customer service experience. I went with Camburg ball joint UCA’s and, for the most part, I am extremely happy with them. I was hoping to get a bit more castor than I did with my 3” lift, but at 2 degrees my T4R drives just fine.

 

[blakem5]

Damm i have spc on my truck and i do a lot of higher speed offroading, think i might make my own uca's now

 

[4RunnerAquasport]

This reminds me of how invaluable this forum is. I was looking at lifts and tires back in 2015, and while doing some research, I came across the threads about UCA weld failures and shocks breaking. Went with TC and Kings, never looked back.

 

[SAC-CA-Runner]

I have SPC's on my truck with no issues and I've had them quite a while. Will they fail? Who knows. A lot of it could come down to maintenance, area you live in in regards to elements, etc. With that said, I was planning to go TC or another brand when I upgrade my LCA's, axles, brakes, etc. But while there may be quite a few failures, how many people that are running them haven't had failures. Of course on forums you're only going to read the bad things. I'm by no means sticking up for SPC and have zero vested interest in them but I've run them on two 4Runners with no issues. My .02

 

[atalarico]

Yeah, I'm bumping the JBA UCA's on my to-do list. Expecting/hoping for a fiscal year-end bonus here in June/July. Otherwise it's going to be a bit until I can manage it. I feel like I'm not off though in prioritizing replacing these eBay UCAs over getting these headers installed for my exhaust leak.

Related question: I remember with the LBJ failures on 3rd Gens that a lot of people had them fail at really low speeds. Is that just coincidence? Is the same thing happening with UCAs, or have people had them fail at highway speeds?

 

[jrm]

Warning: Failure to grease and maintain this ball joint may result in premature failu

Reading the SPC instructions just that if not maintained the UCAs will PREMATURELY...regardless of vehicle mileage... so yeah this could happen after 60k miles of harsh summer/winter driving...

And what has SPC done about all the known faulty and unsafe arms out on the road? Have they reached out to the people that purchased them? No, they wait until something fails and then offer to sell you their upgraded ball joints. Thanks but no thanks, that's not how you run a business. Way to many other arms out there to deal with that.

Having read the massive history of the failure of previous revisions of the SPC UCAs, and talking to SPC about setup, i bought my SPC being pretty confident that they were a good match for my 06'.

Again when i read about failures of ANYTHING on the internet one has to keep in mind that the sample of those products represent a pretty small of a larger production run.

Are you the proud owner of some new SPC arms? What is your personal rig built with? You have zero details, no sig, more like maybe an SPC employee?

I do have the most recent version of this UCA. They were correctly installed and I maintain them on a regular basis. . I also noticed that it doesnt look like you are or have ran aftermarket UCAs on your vehicles.

 

[chris27]

I agree with 20164runner. . . .we saw something similar when the GOBI lawsuit unraveled on here. Turns out an employee came in as an “unbiased party” and just tried countering facts. Only to later be found out they had a vested interest. Much like you do [MENTION=202035]chris27[/MENTION]

Ok buddy feel free to accuse me of being an SPC employee. How do I know everyone else in this thread isn't an employee of Camburg, TC, Icon, DirtKing, etc, trying to make SPC look bad? Works both ways there. Feel free to go back to my post history and you'll see that I participated in a SPC group buy. If I was an employee, would I need to get in on a group buy? Do your research first.

Anyway, if you look back at the beginning of the thread, OP admits he never maintained the ball joints per SPC instructions so how far is that going to get you if you bring a lawsuit against them?

 

[blind squirrel]

I have them on my rig.....:behindsofa:

Other than this site making me paranoid about them I haven't had any issues.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/4th-gen-t4rs/183284-spc-light-racing-uca-3.html

 

[JeffMerr]

The only issues I seem to come across are with the older design, has anyone seen issues with the redesign? I know there's thousands of Tacomas with these UCA's and have yet to see an issue from the Tacoma world forums...unless I've missed them

 

[Slowgoat]

JBA all the way. Disagree with the above post about bad customer service. Marlin has promptly answered any question I had. They are greaseable and won't break the bank. When my arms were produced the coating they used on the ball joint bracket began to show rust after a few thousand miles. It was a defect but didn't affect the function of the arm. I reached out to Marlin and he provided me a cleaning and polishing kit that remedied the issue free of charge. They have since fixed the issue.

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JBAs have been good to me.

Mine rusted. I got Marlin on the phone and he got me fixed up with a completely new set. I just noticed the rust this spring. Now there are new ones on the 4runner. It was a quick and easy process to swap them. I paid for new ones and then got a credit for it all including shipping both ways. He was very helpful.

He is using a new coating, a cerakote.

I didn’t go with the ones that are breaking because I was scared after countless threads about failures here and on other Toyota sites.

I only went with JBA because I’m in such a salty environment, they are greasable, and I know the uniballs would rust.

 

[wadle5]

Ok buddy feel free to accuse me of being an SPC employee. How do I know everyone else in this thread isn't an employee of Camburg, TC, Icon, DirtKing, etc, trying to make SPC look bad? Works both ways there. Feel free to go back to my post history and you'll see that I participated in a SPC group buy. If I was an employee, would I need to get in on a group buy? Do your research first.

Anyway, if you look back at the beginning of the thread, OP admits he never maintained the ball joints per SPC instructions so how far is that going to get you if you bring a lawsuit against them?

I apologize you misread. I said in another thread a similar event occurred. . .My main point as you even quoted was you clearly have a vested interest being that you bought them? Sorry for the confusion.
As previously discussed even if not maintained does that bring the life to less than 60k on aftermarket UCA’s. I can show you a picture of my OEM ones with over 150k on them and no issues with over 70k on them with my lift and have tortured them a little bit? Fun fact also haven’t “maintained” them and have been “Exposed to harsh environments” for over 12 years as referred to by JRM?