Hi All,

After several months of designing and development by our engineering staff, we have finally completed testing of our in-house Champion Motorsport adjustable rear upper control arms, rear toe-steer arms, and front bump-steer adjustable tie-rod ends.

Just a few quick facts about our parts that set them apart from the competition.

• There are no turnbuckles so each part is significantly lighter.
• Crafted using high-grade 6061 T6 aluminum.
• All additional components, i.e. tapered spindles, spacer bushings, etc. are made of the finest quality materials.
• Highest race quality Aurora bearings on each part, with alloy housings.
• The key design feature you will notice is the absence of jam nuts to lock the arms. During the alignment process, a typical double jam nut style arm requires several realignments due to the arms moving while tightening the nuts. Our arms eliminate this margin of error, making final adjustment much easier. The pinch style clamp locks the arm in place without any movement of the bearing itself.
• Complete Titanium series is also in production.

What you see in the pictures below is the finished product being installed on our own test car. Stay tuned for pricing and final availability. Our full inventory is in the final stage of anodizing as we speak.

Enjoy the pictures....

 

Very nice...The finish looks awesome!

 

I've never seen those pinch style clamps used in any racing configuration, that's my concern. I thought ALMS rules required the jam nut arrangement on suspension components, I could be wrong.
I'm from Missouri, you gotta show me.
Please enlighten.

 

Tom that is some super sexy looking stuff. My only question follows TTSurgeon - have you done any cyclic load to failure testing on an MTF for the pinch clamp design?

 

Take a look at the pictures below. What you're looking at are the actual arms that came directly off the LeMans winning Audi R10, complete with Audi's part number. The two larger rods at the top of the picture actually support the full weight of the R10. This design is what we've used to base our parts. Also, if you take a look at Porsche Motorsport rear toe-arms on the RSR, they use the same design. It's proven racecar technology.

 

Thanks for the pictures Tom. Very enlightening.

The Audi arms look like cro-moly steel though. I would be worried about fatigue and fractures in the 6061. Your engineers have done a stress relieving radius at the base of the slot which helps. The Aurora rod ends also look like perhaps only a few threads are circumferentially supported by the Al rod before the slot, and that would be at minimum arm length only. Any lengthening might leave the rod without any circumferential support?

All this may be moot and the design could be 2x times stronger than the anticipated load to failure, but with AL I would recommend an MTF test for fatigue testing. It would be pretty cheap to do.

 

Take a look at the last picture of the parts installed. You can see the threaded end of the Aurora bearing goes well beyond the slot. Don't go by the studio pictures.

As for testing...we've done it. Also keep in mind that the factory parts are cast, and VERY flexible. You can actually twist them in your hands. They are designed to be break-aways. The 6061 T6 has an extremely high tensile strength, far beyond what those parts would ever be exposed to.

 

Thanks for the update.

 

Thanks Tom. Are you going to offer any dust boots for the rod ends?

 

Talk about a CLEAN look. Form and function - looks great!

 

Audi had them in aluminum, TI and Alloy steel depending on the series of the car.. Of course all early R8 stuff was steel alloy, but if you saw the latest micro parts with 6000 lbs of downforce and 3 and 4 g's of cornering force through 6mm rod ends you would never think twice about these overbuilt monsters. You will blow the ears off the upright before this part fails.

We have a complete titanium series coming right behing these. It will be titanium including the taperd spindle bolts, the shims, the bushings, and the rods, which will be much slimmer. They will carry the cost of such construction, and will really be race only type stuff unless you just have to have them..

BTW the red and yellow markings from Audi only represented parts needing inspection or simple expired life cycle. We still have few bits around.

The pushrod ends that you see (with heat shrink around them) are strain guaged so we could read the actual load in KG or Lbs into the Bosch Darab data system. On the 2007 and up cars (Audi R10) these were all aluminum, and it is fully shouldered 8mm bolt that passes through it. We are seeing small perscentages of those loads in porsches and we are using 10 and 12mm bolts. in these areas. with 5/8" alloy super high quality rod ends. We photographed the partnumber so you could look up the quality yourself. Are there higher qulaity rod ends on the market...Yes, but not much.. and the price incresaes exponentially.

Yes, in a huge crash they may break... Great.. that is what is suppose to happen.

 

These do look very nice. Do they increase any noticeable noise transmission with the solid joints? Also, as eclou pointed out do you have plans to provide protection against joint wear....rubber boots?

 

Sweet!

 

I had/have a lot of the gmg components, none added any noise or vibration. The only thing that did were the solid drop links.

 

Sorry for the delay guys! Our parts are finally ready to ship!

We made a few small changes after some real-world testing. Specifically, we decided to change the rod-end we were initially using and opted for a slightly less expensive option, which actually works MUCH better! That, and we also decided to add dust-boots as standard on every rod-end to prevent premature wear. You can check out more pictures and buy here:

Champion Motorsport Suspension Upgrades

As you can see, pricing is extremely competitive, especially considering the higher quality rod-ends and overall improved designed compared to most of our competitors.

Thanks!!