Autofab Race Cars?

[justin.peterson5]

Has anyone used any of their parts? They have double adjustable upper and lower rear control arms for Gbodys. They say they are all tig welded crome-molt tube. They look pretty nice on the site and they are $80-$90 cheaper than anyone else.

http://autofabcart.net/afrc-doubleadjustablerearcontrolarms-1.aspx

 

[UMI Performance]

The main reason they are able to offer a much less price on certain items is the rod ends. They are a non-lined rod end and can usually be picked up for $5 or $6 each. The load rating of the rod ends is probably low and they look like mild steel rod ends. We use a Teflon lined rod end made from chrome moly. If you are going to use the car on the street a lot I wouldn't recommend them due to noise but that doesn't look like what you are doing based on your set-up lol

As for upper control arms we can match that price

 

[Malibu355]

They say on there that you can upgrade to moly rod ends for 30 bux per set.

 

[justin.peterson5]

so they are still $40-$50 cheaper than anyone else I've seen. There is only one logical thing to do.

 

[James Bond]

There are many different types of moly ends. The qa1 xm have a liner and cost $30 ea. Other moly ones can be as little as $12 but require more maintenance due to absence of a liner. also ultimate strengths may be equal but the fatigue life is not.

 

[CutlassRacer]

Just a friendly reminder: There are SIX MalibuRacing.com SPONSORS that sell control arms. These companies help to keep this site up and running, others do not.

 

[justin.peterson5]

Just a friendly reminder: There are SIX MalibuRacing.com SPONSORS that sell control arms. These companies help to keep this site up and running, others do not.

I did notice that at the top of the page. That's how I know the control arms are cheaper. If they want my money they can lower their prices. I don't know about anyone else but I'm into saving money if I can. I could be wrong but, If you can get the same quality part from another vender for cheaper you would. Maybe I'll build my own just don't want to offend anyone because I'm not choosing to spend my money with the sponsors. My .02 WIN!

 

[CutlassRacer]

Just looking at those arms I can tell you that they are not as good as some of the ones offered by several of our sponsors. Smaller tubing and cheaper rod ends are the first things that stick out. Would they be a problem for you specifically.......cant answer that, but I can tell you for sure that TRZ arms are used by some of the quickest G-body cars running and they have never broken one yet. Do you want to be the person who saves a few bucks and tears up the car when you break one of those rod ends, or bends the control arm?

Granted you will probably not have any problems with the cheaper arms, but the "what if factor" is too much for me to trust them. Well, that and the TRZ guys are good friends of mine, lol. The most expensive projects I have done were the ones that I tried to be cheap on. It got more expensive when I had to replace junk with quality. The point is that those control arms, or their components are not the same quality as the more expensive ones, even though they look strikingly similar.

 

[justin.peterson5]

I guess the whole point of this was: Has anyone hadany personal experience with these control arms? If some one can tell me they are junk then I'll buy good ones from a local shop up here where iknow I can get a discount since I've spent $1000s there. I've seen them in person and I know they work. Don't worry they are a sponsor of this site. All I've heard is speculating on how these arms a not as good as the sponsors arms. Everyone says they have the best parts on the market. It all comes down to the opinion of the user of the product. I didn't mean to offend anyone by starting this thread. Just letting people know there are other options out there.

 

[CutlassRacer]

Not offended or mad or anything, just answering your questions. If you want a little more proof, well here ya go. Note the price differences. I just hopped onto Summit's website to give you an example of the price ranges of rod ends. This does not even factor in the pricing of the smaller tubing and tube ends, which would be cheaper also.

Budget, Standard Series Rod End:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HAL-CMR12/
$12 each = $48 worth of rod ends per set of Lower Control Arms

Middle Road, Chromoly:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HAL-PCMR12/
$17 each = $68 per set

Indestructible, Moly, 3-piece, Teflon Lined:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HAL-XPMR12/
$42 each = $168 per set

Obviously the suspension companies would get a price break buying 100s of rod ends at a time, but I hope that shows you where the differences can add up.