Strych9
Well-Known Member
First post here but I may be able to lend a little info.
There are 2 schools of thought at the top level of racing when it comes to the longevity of spherical joints. Open uses the teflon liners to scrape all the trash away. This is proven effective so long as the joint doesn't get used to the point that the teflon liner is crushed or tophats let trash under them. At the same time, the gaps between the ball and the tophats also allow trash back out.
Closed seems more useful but can trap trash where they seal. If you go custom large seal, the problem isn't much better because the seal is either at a bad spot or poorly fit around some abnormally shaped component. In either case, corrosion is nearly inevitable. You get more life up front but when it goes bad, it usually goes downhill quickly.
I've worked in SCORE, IMSA, INDY, and NASCAR and they all had their own reasoning as to why they'd use this or that. We ran open joints in INDY and IMSA GTP. NASCAR and the desert builds used a mix. Of those, two stood out: IMSA GTP and desert builds. The desert builds, often designed from scratch, usually saw wear from being under-sized or a bad fab angle, while the GTP stuff was ususally disgusting by the end of the race. If we didn't see anything with dye with the desert stuff, we'd run it again. If we didn't feel slack with the GTP stuff, we'd run it again.
I've been on the engineering side, the suspension side, and the mechanic side. 90% of premature wear in a joint is either from being used beyond it's range of motion, being cleaned with a chemical that harms the liner, or it is undersized. What surprises me is how common the failures are with SPL's choice of FK rod ends. I've never had an FK joint break in my entire motorsports career, so I'd wager that they have arm flex or they're undersized (idk what size they use).
TL;DR: check the joints everyoil change, after every race, or after every hard hit. Clean them with a lint-free cloth, then use a dry graphite lube. I'm also 100x more of a race car mechanic than I am a street car mechanic so do with that what you will.
There are 2 schools of thought at the top level of racing when it comes to the longevity of spherical joints. Open uses the teflon liners to scrape all the trash away. This is proven effective so long as the joint doesn't get used to the point that the teflon liner is crushed or tophats let trash under them. At the same time, the gaps between the ball and the tophats also allow trash back out.
Closed seems more useful but can trap trash where they seal. If you go custom large seal, the problem isn't much better because the seal is either at a bad spot or poorly fit around some abnormally shaped component. In either case, corrosion is nearly inevitable. You get more life up front but when it goes bad, it usually goes downhill quickly.
I've worked in SCORE, IMSA, INDY, and NASCAR and they all had their own reasoning as to why they'd use this or that. We ran open joints in INDY and IMSA GTP. NASCAR and the desert builds used a mix. Of those, two stood out: IMSA GTP and desert builds. The desert builds, often designed from scratch, usually saw wear from being under-sized or a bad fab angle, while the GTP stuff was ususally disgusting by the end of the race. If we didn't see anything with dye with the desert stuff, we'd run it again. If we didn't feel slack with the GTP stuff, we'd run it again.
I've been on the engineering side, the suspension side, and the mechanic side. 90% of premature wear in a joint is either from being used beyond it's range of motion, being cleaned with a chemical that harms the liner, or it is undersized. What surprises me is how common the failures are with SPL's choice of FK rod ends. I've never had an FK joint break in my entire motorsports career, so I'd wager that they have arm flex or they're undersized (idk what size they use).
TL;DR: check the joints everyoil change, after every race, or after every hard hit. Clean them with a lint-free cloth, then use a dry graphite lube. I'm also 100x more of a race car mechanic than I am a street car mechanic so do with that what you will.
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