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OLD PA-RACING A-ARMS: WHY THEY FAILED
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I added was a set of red powder coated PA Racing A-Arms! These are NOT Chromemoly they are mild steel... they are the 2nd version put out by PA Racing... they now have a 3rd version made to address some flaws in my version!

Check them out:

Back it up for the whole front underside:

***NOTE:***
I had a fluke problem with my A-arms... A few A-arms were outsourced and that company choose to use inferior tubing and mine and the others theymade failed. Since PA does everything in house. For me and others...PA made things right and has improved on the product since my purchase. I would not hesitate to use their products in the future!

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THE FAILURE
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Memorial Day weekend 2005: Well had an odd thing occur just before I entered the HWY on Sunday. Had heard a pop in the gas station about a mile back thought I rolled over a rock. Thought nothing of it and proceeded down the road. As I was about to enter the hwy I slowed for the turn onto the entrance ramp...as I hit the brakes the car shook like the rotors were suddenly severely pulsating...as I pressed harder the car acted like a wheel was about to come off...darting left and right. I brought it down quickly to a stop after that. As I did the car darted to the right...about put me out of the turn lane and into traffic. I shut it off got out and checked for a flat, or a loose rim. Everything was tight and sturdy. Checked the brakes...all 4 courners were fine! Thought steering...checked tie rods...fine! Even popped hood and check the linkages and sway bar! Everything was fine! About this time Joe rolled in behind me. He rechecked everything I did. Nothing! The traffic was crazy and it was not safe to stay where we were to check the suspension any further (passenger side was in traffic, so no laying down to look!) So we slowly drove up to a Hardees the next light up. I checked the steering and hit the brakes a few good times. All seemed normal again. As we pulled in to Hardees to stopped and turned the wheels to the left so we could look at the spindle and strut... that was when we saw it. The Tubular a-arm had snapped. The tube snapped clean thru.

Car has not been hit, nor hit anything in the road (pot holes, speed bumps fast, etc...) The car has not even been autocrossed yet. There was no harsh driving, hard cournering or bumps at the time it let go! The suspension is set up with all z28 parts, (sway, steering) all new energy suspension bushings, eibach springs... They springs were cut slightly (.5 coil) but the car is a v-6 therefore lighter in the front end then normal 3rd gens! Car is a show car, so it is well maintained and cared for dearly! Not a car that would go down a dirt road or off pavement ever! Or a car that would be pushed hard enough in the curvies to ever risk loosing control and wrecking!
Sad thing is I cleaned the a-arms on Fri (for the gathering) and saw and felt no cracks. Yes this means laying under car wiping and washing (i'm that anal). Then again Sat I wiped them down. Still nothing. Then Sunday...boom!

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INITIAL PICTURES
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So are some quick pictures of the carnage on the passenger side rear leg of the a-arm!

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WHAT TO DO
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First things first. I called a tow truck and got the car home. I called some people at the show to let them know what had happened. It was a Sunday night and the next Day was Memorial day, so there was no way I could get PA on the phone�

Had this failure been some fault of mine? Wanting some answers now, I thought of who I might be abel to call! So I knew some venders at the Gathering, so I called Bruce at Hawks 3rd gen parts to let him know I would not be back at the show and also ask him what he thought about the whole thing.

I was told by Bruce that this happened to a PA Racing set he sold to a guy. The guy was drving and the a-arm snapped and the wheel shifted and the guy lost control and the whole front of the car was wiped out. He had contacted PA and they were very reluctant to do anything to fix the situation. Bruce ponied up the funds and parts to fix the kids car and it was all forgotten about. This had me concerned if they would brush me off???

Now the only other place I knew to get answers was online and ask if any other tubular a-arms had failed on anyone else. Maybe this was common for this part regardless of the manufacturer. So I started a thread in the suspension forum on www.thirdgen.org thread figuring I could get some insight on if this had happened before or what might have caused it!

Then it was back to the car to see what we could determine�

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DAMAGE SUMMARY PASSENGER SIDE
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The actual break point intersected the spring pocket at the rear on the further most rear leg of the a-arm (pass side). Looks like it started to crack at the rear corner weld point and then the crack moved towards the bottom and then the piece let go. Upon inspection of the front most leg of the same a-arm Joe and I detected a crack in the powder coating. Usually for the powder coat to crack the metal is cracked/stressed beneath it. The crack is in the same point we believe the crack started on the other leg (the rear most weld point of the spring pocket). Also noticed on the front leg of the a-arm...the weld where the tubing meets up to the a-arm mounting point (to the chassis) there are some cracks in the powdercoat at that weld point.

Also noticed that overall the legs of the a-arm b/w the chassis mount and the spring pocket seemed to have a slight bend in the tubing. Not sure if this is intentional or something that was occuring.

Did not see any contact points with the body!

Pictures are on page 11

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DAMAGE SUMMARY DRIVERS SIDE
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Now this one remained intact, but has the stress cracking in the same places as the passenger side. Stress cracks at both of the rear spring pockets...right where the other side broke. Also the rear most one was worse. Tells me it was going to go as well! This also says that there is a flaw in the design or tube and not just isolated to the piece that broke! Imagine that... what the heck would I have done if both let loose! Crap!

Not body contact points on this side either�

Pictures are on page 12

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MAKING THE CALL TO PA RACING
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6-01-06: Well things started with a call the first day PA was open after the holiday. So, first thing that Tuesday I made the call to PA...

I got a guy, I think named Nathan, on the phone. I told him who I was, that I bought the product direct from them about such and such time ago. I told him the whole story as I explained above and asked what could be done for me. I said I wanted to either have my money back or the part replaced along with compensation for the towing. I expected to be put thru to a manager or the owner, but he says there was nothing that could be done till the product was inspected.

He says something like "Ok... well we will need to see the broken unit then we can determine what went wrong and go from there. We would prefer you send back both sides, but at the very least the broken unit. Send them to us with your contact info and we will let you know what we find out..."

I ask if there is anyone who can talk with me Further about this on the phone, a manager perhaps. This guy said something about he and the owner, Jason, were the ones in charge of the company and they were the ones I needed to address. I asked to speak with the owner and was told he was out, so I asked to leave my name & number�

That was it! Not even an offer to send a ups p/u label... They had to have it shipped back to them on my dime! Ok now I was pissed. At least say sorry, I'm glad you were not killed or that your car was not totaled! Never offered his boss or the owner or their number... never took down my name and address to reference the product purchased directly from them, not thru a vender �

So now they wanted both sides� well I have to use the car still which meant I had to replace the parts with something, so it was back to stock, then I was going to have to pull those back off and put on new ones. Now, due to where it broke, I felt it was a defective part, so I got the Tow bill I want reimbursed and they are going to get a bill for the labor for removing the broken unit and replacing with stock! So at this point I reported back to TGO on my findings and looked to see what others had come up with as to the problem with this piece.

The plan now was to get the part off and call PA back! After some thought and some warnings from others, I decided I wanted things documented from the get go� Going to run a VHS tape and dig camera of the damage! Figure you can never be too careful with your evidence! Then once the part is off, there is a custom tubular chassis place near where I work, Lance Carter of Carter chassis. I figure I will give him a call and see if I can get an impartial inspection from an expert before the unit leaves my hands. I don't want something to conveniently to happen to the a-arm, or them to make some wild claim that I can't verify since I don't have the unit!

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TIME FOR INSPECTION
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Now during this time I had been going back and forth on TGO getting information, still hearing nothing back from the owner at PA. I posted the pics here for TGO to look and and tell me if it was the piece that failed or if it was something I had done wrong. There were some mixed reviews. Some said the part was only meant for Drag racing applications and not for street use� well I also ordered direct from PA and found this on their site�

"Expert Assistance: PA Racing is available to discuss your application to help you choose the right parts, the first time out. If you require assistance with your application, please contact us via e-mail or call our tech line at 812-524-7177"

Well I guess the experts need to listen more carefully when someone calls to say they are buying parts for a street driven car that will see "regular driving". A car that is both lowered and had suspension upgrades. That the car will be auto crossed and drag raced some. We even asked about the k-member for my less uncommon v-6 application. I was told I should use mild steel, for street use. Assured the set with the spring perches would be fine & "safe" for my application. Never was I told PA racing products were only intended for drag race use only. So, I then thought about it saved my $ and ordered them direct from PA.

So then it was time to take the part to have an expert take a look. Lance Carter of Carter chassis was just down the way from me. He is a very well known and well respected chassis builder known thru out the country. He looked at the piece and told me he would never run that small of a tube on that car. The failure in his opinion was inevitable due to too small of a sized tube in a street application. He said it was not the actual diameter of the tube that was the problem, but the wall of the tubing itself was too thin. Said these are no where near strong enough for the street. Then we went on to discuss K-members� He has heard horror stories about them (PA) and most others... he said there was only one company he would consider a prefabbed unit from and that was AJE... I never mentioned AJE to him at all. This was his unsolicited opinion! Funny thing...he offered to build me some a-arms...asking price $1800... but they would NEVER break! LOL!

So then it was off to bring them to our F-body club meeting. See what they thought. Amazingly there was a club member who works for a Metallurgist. He took a good look at the arms and said he saw discoloration in the break point. He stated this is a sure sign of metal fatigue. Fatigue brought on by inferior product, or metal that sized wrong for the application and is over stressed... He said DO NOT sent the part to them. If they need to test it sent them part of the broken part and keep the other so you can have your own tests done to refute theirs. He offered to even fly out and testify if needed. I would just have to let him take one part of the broken piece in and test it at work and then he could present that in court! How is that for an expert opinion?!

So I reported all my findings back to TGO... Hoping someone would have some more insight on whether or not it was all of PA's a-arms or if there was an explaination as to my set being a fluke???

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FIRST RESPONSE FROM PA!
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6-17-05:

Only 16 days after my initial contact with PA...there was a response. Of course not a return phone call to me from the manager as I requested, but a post on TGO!

Here is "Zack from PA's" responce to my findings quoted from TGO:

"Those are a picture of our current design a-arm. We have been making them for almost a year now.
(pics copied from TGO)

I would like to clear a few things up guys.

Our old design a arm was never intended for street use or road race use. The a arm was built to serve one purpose and that was for drag race classes where a stock style front suspension (factory location coil spring) was all that was allowed.

In this situation we are going to send the customer a new set of chromoly a-arms to resolve the situation @ our expense. We have sold literally thousands of sets of these a arms in the past 5 yrs and have honestly not had more than 3-4 sets have any problems. It was found to be a flaw in the tubing itself and not the welding process.�

******To interject here! Zack does not mean me BTW...******

�I read earlier in this post about someone claiming that PA Racing mixes mild steel and chromoly in part construction... there is no truth to that and if someone has a question on welding please notify us asap. Someone even said we mig weld our chromoly?! Also not true at all we have some of the best welders in the industry and if this was not true we would not be known for what we are today. We tig weld all of our chromoly and the majority our mild steel. We tig weld more of our parts that ANY company that builds these parts and we take pride in keeping ours the highest quality available on the market. There are a lot of members of this board that use our products and have had great success with them.

I would also like to bring up the fact that PA Racing and Pro Fab Racing are two different companies and have been that way for a couple years now and often guys that have had problems have had problems with the other party. Anyone with questions or concerns can contact Pa Racing or myself for more info.

I would also like to say that it is unfortunate that when a high profile user has a problem with a companies product, instead of contacting the company to resolve the problem (and giving them time to resolve it), they begin posting negatively about the manufacturer without even giving them a chance to resolve the issue at hand. Had we been given a sufficient time to fix the problem, we would have made it right on the items @ fault. I personally have never seen a company with better customer service than we have here."

******Well, well, well... Not that last part was meant for me!******

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My responce:

"I would say it is unfortunate you see it this way. I would say this post of yours did more to hurt your customer service rep then anything I could or would have said. And I did contact PA, you seemed to miss that post. You need to read thru all my posts! Did I feel much concern from PA about my well being or my cars...no. Was I asked if we were ok...no. I told you all we were lucky everything was ok. No sorry! No here is a call tag to return the product. No I got the impression that I was not believed. Like it was thought I was at fault for the break. I was simply told to box up the units & send them back and PA would look at and determine. This left me concerned...

See I'm no metal or chassis expert. I could have mailed these off and been told anything. And simply mailing the broken part away to someone who has nothing vested in my interests or well being, w/o doing my own investigation would have been short sided. Anyone would agree with this statement. I would think a consumer is allowed to ask questions when something fails, get an education to protect themselves, w/o fear of being told they were posting negatively about the manufacturer. You obviously did not really read thru my posts well, as I did not post negatively about PA. Maybe others did, but I started this thread without PA mentioned in the heading. I did not come out of the box trashing PA... just posted what I found and my concerns about what I found. I did not post this in a high profile area. I posted it where I felt I could get the best information from others to explain the problem! See this site is meant for information gathering. This is how I used it! I simply posted this too see what others had experienced and what their opinion was of the failure! If anything I was giving PA the benefit of the doubt here. I wanted to be able to approach the situation with an education. If the part failed due to my car or to the part. Was it a fluke, or was it common place. To send PA the parts knowing what truely happened and giving them the chance to make it right based on the failure. I see nothing wrong with this line of reasoning.

See you speak of me being a high profile user. Well I guess you need to get to know this high profile user better. Well with that in mind...anyone who knows me on this site knows I never do or say malicious things. I have a rep for being the one who handles things rationally and tactfully, even when the situation would allow for me to be ugly. This is exactly how I have handled the situation here. I have reread thru my posts and I have seen nothing here that was detrimental or that negative. Worst I have said is that in light of what I have found I would not feel comfortable running the product again. And since this diclaimer thing is being tossed around, I would think that PA would not feel I should use the product again. And yes I said I felt the K-member looks weak in some key areas, but I did not post the k-member pics. I just commented on what I saw. Trust me if I wanted to go after you in a negative light this small thread is not what would have happened.

And in fact if you had simply had paitence yourself, you would have seen a nice resolution to the whole problem would have been posted as well. So all could see your true customer service."

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Joe added:

� Notice she didn't post your name in the topic, nor was the topic put in the vendor/product review board...she merely posted to gather information, as anyone has a right to do. If you think some effort has been made to bash your product, you sadly underestimate both of us. You would be dealing with dozens of message boards and e-mail lists, not just one post in the suspension section here.�

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Here was another member�s response... all of which will hit home with the end of this story:

"Well tell me something Zack since you posted the above comment. How many people that have bought this same design A-arm from you are still running around on them with NO F*CKING CLUE as to the potential life threatening problem that happened here to Shannon. I would like to see proof on your part that you are sending out warnings to those previous customers to check their cars right now for this same potential failure."

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SECOND RESPONSE FROM PA!
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6-20-05:

Now the owner Jason came on! He says:

"As for redraif(in which I still don't have a real name or phone number for), anytime there is a problem with any part our company policy is send pictures or parts to us to inspect and resolve the issue. First thing needed is a invoice showing when and where the parts was made/bought ( I get this alot believe it or not that say they have our parts but really come to find out they do not) second is you need to contact myself before anything will ever be settled on a problem @ Pa Racing not our sales staff (this was never done). Also posting problems on the net before anything is resolved isn't a very fair way to get things handled (atleast not in my book) so don't be upset if things are not handled as you would like them.

As for the main posting here is the arms @ fault we have had a problem with the old design(maybe 5 sets) in the past year that had come back with a problem (note the new design was made after the first one was returned) there is not a problem with every a-arm designed that way (there was just a batch of 10 or so that was made with this material by an outside source in Streator IL) that is the reason alot of buyers have not been sent anything (some have though from our records there was only eight sent out and of those eight seven was to shops that resold them) I can say if anyone feels there arms are unsafe send them back and get them exchanged (I've did this since I've started Pa Racing on any part I make. I've even exchanged for parts that were not made by myself with no hassle or questions) but keep in mind almost every other problem I've had and resolved I've delt with the customer before it's got to this point.

Another thing is the disclaimer has been on my web site since day one and it wasn't just added not that this any big thing (they don't do squat in court, I've been there before and it was with redraifs new suspension company choice but thats a whole new can of worms).

As for the testing the parts and not selling them as parts to be driven on the street cars. Last I checked the parts on most likely 95% of your cars are in the same boat, very few aftermarket parts are DOT approved (reason this is very costly) almost any part you bolt on your car is this way it's your chance/risk your taking when you decide to modify your DOT approved car/truck. We made this type of arm from 98-01 on just customers race cars we built and ran. Once i seen others wanted them (we never had the plan to sell them in mass production from the first day) with that being said we ran them on several cars not one being slower than a 8 sec 3200lb car with no failure's. Also if the arms were ever purchased from myself and you were talking to me I also said and still say I wouldn't run this arm on a true street car unless very few miles were planned.

This is all I have time to post on the matter if anyone would like further info e-mail me @ Jason@paracing.com or call the shop @ 877-550-8400 ask for myself if i'm not available leave a name and number to be reached and I will return it as I get the time."

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My responce:

"As for my real name and number...How many girls have called about failed a-arms the first week of June? I never called...bull crap. not this is infuriorating! I believe I spoke with Nathan, he said you and he were the one in charge of the company and who I needed to address. I assume it was not you cause surely you would remember the girl who called with the red f-body show car that had the break prior to the hwy ramp. I tried to leave him my name and number, but I guess he did not take them down. I was told to remove the product and mail both sides back, before anything would be discussed. To mail my contact info in a note with the product along with my concerns and they would be addressed at that time. Someone would get back with me. That PA had to insepct the part before any dialog about compensation would be addressed! This along with the lack of concern over my well being was highly alarming and the main reason I decided to investigate this myself and have the arms inspected by someone impartial. So it is you customer service that pushed me to feel I needed to protect myself first and formost, cause I did not feel the company had my best interest at heart. And you know to this point in this thread I had not mentioned all this, but you are now bad mouthing & threating me to not address my problem in a fair fashion because I used this resource (tgo) to investigate the failure. Now that is juvenile.

The point is I tried and was given the cold shoulder and treated like I did not matter. It took time to get the parts off the car to even be able to send them in to you. And it amazes me that gathering good information & investigating a failure myself is considered a problem. Why? I have the right as a comsumer to have inpartial parties give me an opinion w/o being threatened that my concerns will not be address becasue of it!

I had been told by "Hawk's 3rd gen parts" prior to contacting PA that PA left him holding the bag when a similar failure occured. The whole cars front end was wiped out! That the whole thing was blamed on a bad batch of "10 oor so" a-arms. Well I bought directly from you. Holding the credit card statement in my hand. I was not informed of the bad part when you had my info as having brought the product directly from you. I was not supposed to be concerned by that?

Well I spoke with your staff. I did not know that I had to speak with you directly to get the true skinny on whether or not the part would work for my application. It does not say that on the quote from your site I outline in an above post!

I will be calling you. I hope that accusatory finger pointing at me can be put aside for our conversation as I did nothing wrong by investigating the failure. Again I could have run all over trashing your product. Don't undermine my resourcefulness. And as you other employee mentioned, I am a high profile person on this site and could have taken advantage of that, but I choose not to!"

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THE RESOLUTION!
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This is what I posted on TGO after speaking directly to Jason @ PA!

"Well... mailing the part will not even be necessary. Jason took a look at my pics and dug in his records when he got my name. He actually remembered me buying the arms from him directly, esp when he saw I was from GA. (He has raced down at my local 1/4 track in the past!) He confirmed that I did in fact receive one of the a-arms from the bad batch he mentioned above. He was having some work done off site and was not able to watch this other companies every step. They either got some bad steel, or used the wrong guage steel. As a result, the arms I mentioned above (Hawks) and mine and a few others have broken in the exact same place. The steel this other place used could not hold up to the weigh & stess, again due to the wrong or inferior product they used. Jason had some of the other broken sets checked and confirmed the error in the steel. You know what Jason said he did with the ones that fail...see if there are any other failures, how they occured, have the tubing thickness inspected and have the part analized by a metalergist (sp)... just what I did! HMMM WOW! So I took the appropriate steps to determine my problem, by getting all the avail information I could.

Since mine is of the same batch he knows this was the problem with them as well. So mine don't need to be shipped back!

As a result, PA's parts work is now only done in house & the design has been reinforced further. In fact, after the conversation I had with Jason, I can't see having a problem using his products in the future! In fact, I was discussing the 82 by the end of the conversation! I believe, if the right steel had been used on my set, my car would have been able to use them sucessfully even on the street. In fact in our conversation when we were discussing replacement there was no mention of street use being unsafe for my application, nor that I misused the product. So I feel, he feels my failure was only due to the bad steel, and not misuse of the product! Since I went ahead and ordered the AJE set, I opted for a reinbursement, but after our talk, I would have felt confident in a replacement piece.

If you have any issues or questions about the products PA sells, do yourself a favor and speak to Jason directly the first time. He is in and out alot training his people, but its worth the wait. Now all this confusion and hard feelings would have been avoided if the gentleman on the phone, when I called the first time back when this thread started, would have actually taken my number & passed it on to Jason as I asked. Then this thread would have simply been the arm broke here is why and now look at how well Jason handled it!

But at least thru all this there is still a Happy ending! In the end the fact that my set was used on the street was not the reason it broke at all. (So the disclaimer for street use debate can be laid to rest!) The parts were bad and would have broken in any event."

In the end, I got an apology and my money refunded for the product, shipping, towing, and labor.

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MORAL
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***Do your research if something goes wrong...

***NOTE:***
I had a fluke problem with my A-arms... A few A-arms were outsourced and that company choose to use inferior tubing and mine and the others theymade failed. Since PA does everything in house. For me and others...PA made things right and has improved on the product since my purchase. I would not hesitate to use their products in the future!

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HOME PAGE

Follow this link to additional information on the car not found on this site!
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DIRECTORY FOR RAIF'S HANDLING SITE
01 Site Overview
02 Rims
03 Tires
04 Shocks & Struts
05 Lowering Springs
06 Panhard Rod & Lower Control Arms
07 Steering
08 Sway Bars & Wonderbar
09 Strut Tower Brace
10 Old PA Racing A-Arms: Failure <<<
11 Old PA Racing A-Arms: Passenger side damage
12 Old PA Racing A-Arms: Driver side damage
13 Subframe Connectors
14 Underbody View
15 Brakes
16 AJE Racing: Tubular cross member
17 AJE Racing: Tubular A-arms and coilover conversion

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