My best advice is if you're more of a diy'er and don't change your alignment that often the Z1's are a great option. After red locktighting my ball joints and getting the alignment where it needs to be my Z1 arms have been great. I've been running them for about 5 months now including through an Ohio winter. I gave them a good check when I swapped from the D2 coilovers to the Swift springs and everything is fine.

If you're frequently making changes and want the top of the line, simple to adjust arms go with the SPL's for sure.

 

no frequent changes. will be dropped, find the right height for my daily driving, align, and we will be good to go.


thanks for the insight

 

My right side arm is making noise again. I'm going to need to take a closer look tomorrow and report back.

 

nooooooooooooooo!!!!!

 

So an update for everyone. After dealing with Z1 they eventually refunded me my money for the arms. The replacement heim joint has failed just as the original has. I emailed Spencer to see what I can do. Here's my original email and his reply...

So they acknowledged that there was a flaw in manufacturing and they have done something to fix future batches, which is good but this whole ordeal has left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. They claimed these arms were race tested which I find very hard to believe as they came apart within a few thousand miles if that! I guess spending 70 bux for the poly street joints isn't so bad but this will be the 3rd time taking everything apart! So even though they refunded me my money it doesn't cover my time (never mind if I had a mechanic do the work) and the realignment. I am very unhappy.

 

Dang, sorry to hear that. I've got almost 5k miles on the arms at this point after using red loctite and no issues.

 

So on the original joint I did back out the bolt and applied some of the red loctite I had and reassembled. The joint eventually failed anyways (possibly because I didn't know the correct torque spec of I was using the wrong loctite) and a replacement was sent to me. The new replacement has the same issue, which means it was assembled with the 262 loctite. The only concern I have is that my original was damaged internally from coming lose and I'm not sure I want to buy some 271 loctite, back out the bolt and torque it down only to find out it has damage just like the original. According to Spencer the issue is with 262 loctite as they have switched to 271 loctite to prevent this issue from happening to future batches.

My thing is, shouldn't this have been identified on their race cars they used to develop the product? I experienced the issue during a few thousand miles of highway driving to and from work. I find it hard to believe they race tested these and didn't experience these issues then.

Even more weird is the fact that my driver's side has zero issues, which means maybe they did know about this issue and couldn't discern which were assembled using the old 262 loctite and the new 271 so I was sent a mixed batch.

Either way this has been a terrible experience with these arms and Z1 and it looks like at minimum I will be disassembling my suspension for a 3rd time

I might just obtain a replacement heim joint, sell these arms and buy something different

 

It is weird for sure especially since mine was only an issue on the passenger side as well. They say daily driving is harder on parts than any other type of driving, but I do agree this would have had to have been found out while road racing. I wonder if the lighter 370z just doesn't have the issues we do?

 

This is why critical parts like brakes, suspension, tires are best left to the big name players.
Z1 is good for their oil cooler and smaller stuff.

 

Possibly but it's only a matter of about 2-300lbs depending on the model difference. That can be made up with having a couple people with you in the car. In any case I don't believe enough testing was done and the problem was discovered on customers cars.

 

Makes me glad I popped for the SPL arms right from the beginning.

 

Exactly i will pay more for better parts.. Especially suspension parts

 

So 3rd time is a charm on new Joints they are sending me for both sides. They're built with 271 loctite so are supposed to not allow the bolt to back out, we'll see. If this doesn't work I can say I give up and go SPL. Will report back after install and after several thousand miles.

 

Good luck I hope it works out for you this time

 

I made a video to elaborate on the issues I've been having...