Box Rocket
SILVER Star
First things first...THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS A BASH ON CHRISTO SLEE! I AM NOT SLAMMING HIS PRODUCTS IN ANY WAY.
I have had a set of Outback front control arms on my truck since I bought it back in 2001. They've seen many miles and plenty of wheeling. Christo can correct me if I'm remembering facts wrong but he worked with Brian Williams (?) of Outback suspensions to design these arms back in the late '90s. These arms included a wristed joint at the top (rear) of the control arm to relieve stress on the bushings and possibly help flex slightly.
Anyway, over Memorial Day weekend while on a camping trip with my family I noticed a new noise from the front end of my truck. Once I got home I took a closer look at things and found a crack in the driverside control arm that appeared to just be along the bottom of the arm just forward of the rear eye at the axle. Then I started pushing on the front section forward of the crack and it was clear that the arm had completely broken as the front peice of the arm up to the front eye was loose.
I pulled the arm last night and this is what I found. Clearly this arm has been cracked or partially broken for quite a while based on the rusty/greasy fracture surface. Also of note is that it has broken primarily right at the weld seam all the way around, with the exception of the very bottom that was the only portion of the tube that was maintained during construction. That is what failed on me last weekend, that bottom peice finally breaking.
What concerns me and why I am posting this is what appears to be extremely poor weld penetration around that joint for the bushing eye. There looks to be basically ZERO penetration into the control arm tube. I don't think there are too many out there running the old Outback arms like these, but their design and construction is very similar to the old (not the new machined) Slee arms. Most likely these arms were not welded up by the same individual that did the welding on the Slee arms so again, this is not meant as a criticism of Christo's product, but based purely on the similarity of the design I would recommend a close inspection of your control arms if you are running the old Slee arms. The tricky part is the problem area on my arms was hidden by the bracket on the axle and therefore difficult to see from a quick visual inspection. But checking frequently for cracks in your control arms can't be a bad thing just so you can catch a problem before in gets you in trouble.
I have seen some similar failures with some of the Slee arms, including a local cruiser guy that had a Slee arm fail on him in Moab. It was an almost identical failure except it broke behind the rear eye at the axle. So I'm just suggesting periodic inspection of your control arms if you have the Slee arms that aren't the new machined design.
Christo, I hope you don't take this as a jab, it is not intended as such and I thank you for you assitance and advice with this. For what it's worth I will be attempting to repair these arms and continue running them, but in the meantime I have some stock arms and just ordered new caster plates from Christo to use while I make repairs.
I have had a set of Outback front control arms on my truck since I bought it back in 2001. They've seen many miles and plenty of wheeling. Christo can correct me if I'm remembering facts wrong but he worked with Brian Williams (?) of Outback suspensions to design these arms back in the late '90s. These arms included a wristed joint at the top (rear) of the control arm to relieve stress on the bushings and possibly help flex slightly.
Anyway, over Memorial Day weekend while on a camping trip with my family I noticed a new noise from the front end of my truck. Once I got home I took a closer look at things and found a crack in the driverside control arm that appeared to just be along the bottom of the arm just forward of the rear eye at the axle. Then I started pushing on the front section forward of the crack and it was clear that the arm had completely broken as the front peice of the arm up to the front eye was loose.
I pulled the arm last night and this is what I found. Clearly this arm has been cracked or partially broken for quite a while based on the rusty/greasy fracture surface. Also of note is that it has broken primarily right at the weld seam all the way around, with the exception of the very bottom that was the only portion of the tube that was maintained during construction. That is what failed on me last weekend, that bottom peice finally breaking.
What concerns me and why I am posting this is what appears to be extremely poor weld penetration around that joint for the bushing eye. There looks to be basically ZERO penetration into the control arm tube. I don't think there are too many out there running the old Outback arms like these, but their design and construction is very similar to the old (not the new machined) Slee arms. Most likely these arms were not welded up by the same individual that did the welding on the Slee arms so again, this is not meant as a criticism of Christo's product, but based purely on the similarity of the design I would recommend a close inspection of your control arms if you are running the old Slee arms. The tricky part is the problem area on my arms was hidden by the bracket on the axle and therefore difficult to see from a quick visual inspection. But checking frequently for cracks in your control arms can't be a bad thing just so you can catch a problem before in gets you in trouble.
I have seen some similar failures with some of the Slee arms, including a local cruiser guy that had a Slee arm fail on him in Moab. It was an almost identical failure except it broke behind the rear eye at the axle. So I'm just suggesting periodic inspection of your control arms if you have the Slee arms that aren't the new machined design.
Christo, I hope you don't take this as a jab, it is not intended as such and I thank you for you assitance and advice with this. For what it's worth I will be attempting to repair these arms and continue running them, but in the meantime I have some stock arms and just ordered new caster plates from Christo to use while I make repairs.
