Whiteline Lower Control arms: What happened?
 

When Whiteline released their lower control arms with the yellow/gold coating on the beefy arms for $500 something, I instantly fell in love with it

http://www.maperformance.com/whiteli...FRRcfgodsb0JNg

but what happened to it? I placed an order, and waited for 5 months, and then the vendor got back to me and told me it was discontinued.

Now I guess they released a new one that's like.. this?

http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/whit...A#.VguJZvlViko


Does anyone happen to know why they discontinued the first ones?

That new one looks like a Alibaba special...

What do you recommend instead? 1.5" lowered

my stance lower arms fit great and are quality pieces

Those "new" Whiteline LCA's look a heck of a lot like my SPC lower arms... only in silver instead of the oem black color...

There was production issues with the original ones and cost went up significantly. New arms are affordable and get the large % of people covered with the adjustments they need.

The new Whiteline arms look nice. Other than the color, are they actually any different than the SPC version? Methinks they probably just rebranded them.

SPC is actually a better value, as it comes with the toe arm adjustment inserts.

http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/spc-...l#.VgwGtPlVhBc

-alex

Glad I went with Racer-x instead of waiting for the whiteline "re-design".

Not sure yet. I doubt they are SPC re-brand but shall see. As soon as we get some in we'll review them and post up some info on them.

Ah okay! Thanks for the clarification! I ordered through your website and was then told discontinued months later, haha

So Whiteline had production issues and it got too expensive,

The new ones feels like a serious downgrade in terms of "aesthetics"

If those really are the new design... I'll be skipping whiteline and look somewhere else now. Or try to find the old design

Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk

Yeah, it's another reason we did went with Velox to work on an LCA.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92928

Will only find them used now. They been out of the usa for over a year now I would say.

A set of 12mm camber bolts will get you plus or minus half a degree.

Yeah I really wanted the original Whiteline ones too but couldn't find any anywhere new or used. Was just about to bite the bullet on RSR or Cusco when I came across the FT86/Velox ones. They are really close to the original Whiteline units (well...actually better in terms of materials but lack the adjustable mounting points).

If you have the little extra money to spare, those get my vote as a viable fix to the lack of OG Whiteline pieces. But don't know how many they will be making :iono:

I'm a fan of both the Velox and RacerX ones. it will be a hard decision

I went with Racer-X but Velox is definitely the better option if you are looking to save weight.
I like that both allow you to choose the type of rod end, so you can't go wrong with either one.
Here's a shot of mine:
http://i.imgur.com/Yi0e7uIh.jpg

They had some pretty massive production problems, We managed to get a few in right before they stopped shipping them but they went pretty quickly.

In the rear? How's that work with the multilink setup? A link or some pics would be great, I wasn't aware of this.

All the aftermarket lower control arms do is allow you to adjust the length of the arm. Instead of that, just put an eccentric bolt in the inner lower control arm mounting hole, with the stock arms. This way you're adjusting the pivot location instead of the length of the arm, which is a more ideal solution as it leaves the camber curves the same side to side.

I'd take a picture of mine, but it's raining like crazy and I'm lazy. But all you'd see is slightly different looking bolt in the end of the stock lower control arm.

Everyone and their dog rebrands the spc/whiteline style bolts. Here's amazons lowest price for them. You can check amazon, they have them for as little as $11 with free shipping. Or if you'd rather chevy cobalts came with 12mm strut bolts. I'm guessing chevy would sell crash bolts for the cobalt.

I was under the impression that bolts only work for the front struts, the rears don't have holes that are reliable for using undersized or eccentric bolts to relocate, I can't seem to find what you suggest, please post a link and let this be a monument to my stupidity (I would have bought them 10 months ago to even out the rear if they were under $50). Install video, pics, anything.

All I can find are eccentric bushings for the rear well over $100.

http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/whit...l#.Vg69r3pVhBc

Edit: pics of the OE setup, it makes sense that it can be done as I know toe can affect camber there with the three mounting points affecting each other, I just missed the memo on a specific solution if one exists, seems to be scarce, my google fu is usually not so lacking.

http://services.edmunds-media.com/im...a_bottom_a.jpg

http://services.edmunds-media.com/im..._knuckle_a.jpg

I don't know of anyone that sells something specifically for this, they're too busy trying to sell bling bling control arms that turn a larger profit. Well, that's how I interpret things. Whiteline did sell adjustable bushings for that location, but they stopped when they brought out their lower control arms. I tried to get them to reconsider but they wouldn't.

http://i.imgur.com/kjGM5xg.jpg

This is how mine look. It's pretty boring right. That bolt in the left side is an eccentric bolt.

The toe adjustment is no different that it would be with any after market control arms. I can't imagine how that hole couldn't take the mounting point being a couple mm out of position, or any other reason not to take this route.

I have a set of the bushings you posted, but I don't have them installed, they just weren't worth the hassle.

IMO I would be suspicious that the subframe would not be designed to compress with the clamping force necessary to hold the location of the link under load, however some form of lock washer should do the trick on an eccentric bolt (same solution on the front very common bolts), I would have totally tried it at the time had I known.

Glad to see it's working out for you and I learned something today.

:cheers:

I too was interested in both the SPC and the Whiteline LCAs since I'm not really lowered (actually, quite the contrary lol) and didn't need anything that flashy (just a little bit of rear camber correction). I went ahead and e-mail whiteline and got this response:

So basically, there is a 2 degree adjustment on the outboard and a 0.5 degree inboard, 2.5 total. Also, these do not include a toe bushing as the SPC's do.

So, if one wanted to reduce negative camber, would it be better to go with Whiteline?

I guess it would ultimately depend on how much correction you need. The SPC's have a +/- 2 degrees adjustment range while the Whitelines can do +/-2.5 degrees. IMHO, both are good budget solutions, with the SPC's being around $50 cheaper right now.

For my personal needs, I just need 0.5, but don't mind being able to adjust for more, so might go with the Whitelines. YMMV

I considered Whitelines, went with SPL. Now reading this thread I'm really glad I did. The SPL were easy to adjust enough for a noob to drive to the shop for alignment and they do actually exist.

I was talking to a vendor last month and they said that the Whitelines, along with many other manufacturers with similar designs were seeing high failure rates. The bolt that is used to adjust the length of the control arm is where the failure usually occurred, just shearing off.

The vendor also told me that the only LCA that they hadn't had any major issues with was the SPC. Makes sense then that Whiteline has decided to essentially copy the SPC design.

I ended up going with the SPC and I'm very happy with them, my only complaint is lack of colour...

This doesn't sound completely far fetched to me. I've spoken to a couple folks with track built cars that use the SPCs without any problems. I think you are mostly paying for looks (and a little over engineering) with those billet mahined arms.

why spend $300 on a stock are painted silver with bushings that will most likley give a shorter life then the oem solid rubber ones lol. id rather cut slots into my stock arms.. dam this is old thread, thats what searching gets you lol

Hey, reviving this thread cause I was wondering if SPC and Whiteline ones are really the same as you state here. Whiteline weights 3.8lbs while SPC is 4.5lbs, according to official sources, so what are we missing here hmm

I will be buying some reasonably priced LCAs and WL is my main option, due to weight factor

I've had both WL and SPC and they both have "SPC" stamped on them so they are indeed the same. This is also the case for the SuperPro arms.

https://imageapi.partsdb.com.au/api/...onbzhFl0GQUhOB

Only difference will be the inner bushings, which will be polyurethane in the case of WL and SP, but SPC uses a "cross-axis" bushing that seems to be similar to the pillow bushing found in the OEM STi RLCAs. Weight difference between the bushing styles will be negligible. I believe that Whiteline originally had an offset in their inner bushings but their newest design has removed that.

Either way, all these "SPC" arms seem to be non-OEM replacement arms that are slotted by SPC. I believe some of these companies have procured and painted them for re-sale.

very good info thanks, actually SPC answered to my email:


so yep we can confirm in nearly the same. Thereby I will go for the SPC due to the xAxis

IMO LCAs are overprescribed and generally not needed. Also nowhere near the level of engineering and testing (including millions and millions of miles of real-world street and track testing by we the customers) behind them vs. OEM. For probably 95% of these cars that are tracked, aftermarket LCAs are not much if any benefit and will almost certainly have a much shorter lifetime than stock.

I'm a structures engineer and IMO almost all aftermarket suspension offerings are a but suspect... When I needed to lengthen the lower front control arms on my 240Z I modified the factory arms myself rather than entrust my safety to adjustable aftermarket arms...

I went with Whiteline rear LCAs to get some adjustability. With my car lowered 1", the stock LCAs gave me around -3* camber and with the toe at 0" I was getting a lot of wear on the inside of my rear tires(17x9). My camber now is just under -2*. I would have like to have gotten it closer to -1* but I would need aftermarket toe arms.

The Whiteline quality looks pretty good. Nice powercoating. I probably need to invest in a pyrometer to check alignment rather than waiting for the tire to wear enough to see what is going on.

Huh, I've never had undue "camber wear" running -3.2 front -2.8 rear camber since 2018, even on winter tires that never saw track or even "spirited" street use...

Aftermarket can look great, have perfect welds, but they just aren't going to be backed up by anything like the analysis and testing vs. factory arms.

I don't use a pyrometer any more as I simply won't have enough dedicated test time to determine what temp profile is optimal for a given track. Fortunately there is a quite broad range of camber settings that will work quite well, particularly at the rear. Front definitely wants on the order of -3 min...

I could be chasing the wrong problem. This is my first set of 200tw tires (Federal 595 rs, 245 45 17). The dealer said run 32 psi which appears too low as the middle of the tires show much less wear. Last couple of events, I ran 38 psi and the wear evened out but I still had wear on the inside.

I'm debating with my inner voices about trying to get another event out of these tires, going with something like Conti extremecontact force or something else. I run HPDE so getting every 0.001 out of the car is not too impt but I would like to reduce the cost of consumables.

34psi hot is what I aim for at the track. I wouldn’t try to adjust pressures to get even wear across the tread, radials don’t really work like that. Old rules based on old bias-ply tires…. A lot of tires will wear down the outsides quicker while maintaining some tread depth in the middle.

In my experience there is a broad range of hot pressures that will yield similar lap times at the track. 34psi hot is what I’d aim for, 36 fine as well and conservative. 38 psi definitely a bit on the high side. Some feel like lower is always better but I disagree…

Hankook RS4 last a long time, another option to consider.

Surprised you are seeing more *inside* wear at the track. Even at -3+ camber the fronts should wear outside tread more. For me wear is more dominated by fronts than rears, then I rotate between events.

On that point, I've been looking at RLCA's for installing a set of coilovers for autocross use. I was under the impression they were needed or your camber could be all out of whack. I'd love to just keep stock if it gave anywhere between 2.0-2.5 degrees, but isn't that a crapshoot to just take that chance?

ZDan had excellent symmetry on his BRZ so even with lowering the car the numbers were very similar side to side.

My camber was -1.8 left and -2.4 right in the rear, so with that in mind do what you feel is safest. At the end of the day neither of us will pay for your potential second corrective alignment :bonk: