I have King Motorsports rear spherical UCA's. One of the rod ends has a little tiny bit of play. When I grab the top of the wheel (with the car jacked up) and shake it in and out, it rattles a little. If I look at the edge of the tire, it had a little tiny bit of play, maybe 1/16th of an inch back and forth (in and out).

Is it even possible for these rod-ends to totally fail?? I have a track event on Sunday. The only time I notice it driving is if I drive that wheel over rumblestrips, or those little reflector bumps they put in the road to divide lanes. Then it rattles loudly.

Anyway. UCA's are cheap enough, so I may order some new ones sometime, but then I have to get aligned again...

 

Get a camber gauge and align the rear yourself. The camber adjustment won't affect the toe adjustment. Slop in the rear suspension that changes camber enough that it is visible will make for some fairly spooky handling characteristics.

 

It's really very little. You really have to look closely to be able to see it. However you can hear the clank-clank of the "eye" of the rod end moving back and forth it it's socket (maybe .010" or .020").

 

If they are metal on metal spherical, then you got suckered, and yes, they will rattle. Get Teflon lined next time.

If they are Teflon lined and they are loose, then you got suckered again, so get better ones next time and seal them up from dirt.

And no, they won't fail if they are a little loose.

 

I was looking at this topic , you can see the King motorsport Upper arms

https://honda-tech.com/forums/showth...2512841&page=2

AM-12T is a Aurora bearing part #

Pretty expensive

 

yeah, I think the part is good quality, but someone doing my alignment torqued a circlip into the edge of the 'socket' part of the rod-end. I put it into a hyrdaulic press to fix the gouge that the circlip had left (which had completely frozen the movement of the spherical bearing). This worked marvelously, but now i have a little bit of play in that rod end, and it rattles.

 

OK, well you didn't mention that the looseness was due to you purposely jacking up your rod end. In that case, its strength is probably a bit compromised depending on how much you jacked it up, but since the UCA doesn't experience very high loads, you might be ok.