Rose joints/rod ends help re how do i choose quality units

[Martyn-123]

Hi,

Rebuilding my car from scratch www.marcosmantula.com and about to refit the suspension and need some guidance re rose joints/rod ends. As the car has 8 on the front suspension and 13 on the rear I could spend a fortune if i am not careful.

How do i know what quality to go for ? is it simply a case of the more expensive the better (probably not) and which material ? It's a road car but have just bought a 5.0V8 engine so need to know i am buying heavy duty ones to cope and ones that will last,

Already seen Merlin motorsport who have National rod ends at £28 for 1/2 x 1/2 or Rally Design carbon steel ones at £9.80 or Chrome moly steel at £18.28 and McGill Motorsport Alloy steel heavy duty £7.50 and Autosport doing carbon steel ones at £18.69.

Such a wide range in price and they all claim they are the best

Help !!!!

Martyn........

[Espritment]

Hi Marlyn, I live in South Africa and because of our distance from most technical manufacturing sources of material, our choice is not always what it should be. I have raced Lotus 7, Sports 2000, and a 500hp V8, and have found that the inexpensive IKO ones did the job, but had to keep an eye on tolerance movement, paricularly in rear suspension because of that kind of power under acceleration. There can be direction movement. They were simple and cheap enough to change. For a road car you may want better quality like Aurora, as you do not want to change them once a year.

In the Sports 2000 there was often heavy contact, and I found that the IKO joints bent but did not break, and I was able to complete the race, whereas with some of the more expensive joints they would break off under the same amount of contact, and put paid to all my efforts. It may have something to do with the hardening of the high tensile steel, as opposed to a lesser quality steel.

Just as a matter of precaution, please place a washer larger than the ball joint opening on any joints ending on a thin shaft held in place by just a nut. I had the nasty high speed experience in a very old road going Lotus 7 when one of it's modified rear links came loose due to the ball pulling through the joint, and ending up with the rear axle moving position, and kissed the Armco barrier with much eventual damage. My wife and I were particularly lucky as that little car did not even have a rollbar.