Just a heads up.... anyone else seen this happen?

I have H&R Street Coilovers on an '03 996 Turbo. The failure occurred on the piece that connects the rear shock to the sway/anti-roll bar droplink. I contacted H&R customer service and received a non-interested tone and the response that they've "never heard of this happening". They wanted no additional info or pictures. I was referred to a distributor to buy a replacement part.

This is the broken side -- the piece on the shock is broken as well as the top of the droplink:





This is the other side, still intact:



I was told by my shop that it's easy to see why these would fail where they did -- the piece should not be kinked the way it is as this would weaken the part. They said they're pretty sure the design of these has been updated since mine were made (at least 3 years old) so that they are more smooth. H&R denied the design has changed. I'll have to see when the new units arrive.

 

Wow that blows man, at least your shop will help you get this sorted and the failure didn't cause you to lose control at speed.

Regardless of how or why the part broke, the way H&R handled the situation makes me question if I'd consider them in the future. At the very least you'd think they'd want to better understand the issue or provide some more insight, given different circumstances things could've been worse

 

Wondering if the drop link should be mounted on the outside of the sway bar to give it a straighter angel to the bracket that broke. Looks like it in your pics, but hard to tell.

Also I'm wondering if there could have been any binding of a drop link or any other installation issue that caused this. All components should be free to operate through their full range of movement without being stressed, confined, or otherwise restricted.

I've seen a lot of this type of stuff before and there is usually a reason other than it just broke. Thoroughly check things out before installing your new part or you may set that one up for breaking as well. Not trying to be critical at all, trying to help.

 

I was thinking the same thing as well. I searched for quite a while and the only good pic I could find was on Vivid's site. Different shocks but the droplinks are mounted outboard.

 

Kevin,
I have a feeling that when your shocks were mounted the drop links were reversed and were mounted with a bit of preload in the mono ***** which was putting constant "torque" on the bracket and over time it was weakened (the reason I say this is the fact that both the DL bracket AND drop link failed). This is very easy to do especially when your links have the dust boots on them which makes it harder to tell if your mono ***** are centered, you have to go by feel. When you mount the drop links and tighten everything, you have to be able to grab the drop link shaft and rotate it from side to side to make sure you have enough free play in the monoball through the full travel of the suspension. Another thing you can do is go with a slightly longer drop link which will minimize any angles between the sway bar and the DL brackets. I am using the exact same DL brackets on my JRZs without any problems but I'm using the longer Tarett drop links. And you know how hard my car gets used.....

 

Well, I got my car back and the collar the droplink bolts to is indeed still made the same way with the sharp 'kink'. The shop said by attaching the droplink to the outboard side of the sway bar (rather than the previous inboard) it was easier to connect, so likely the previous install had pre-tension on the parts that could have caused them to fail in this manner.

New parts installed:
20140620_091034 by kfanciu, on Flickr

 

the drop link is configured backwards, the tapered spacer needs to face the ball for the movements