[MotorMounts]

O.K. Guys, These things are finally available. We started to make these wide wheel trailing arms years ago but pulled away for one reason or another and since MAP and KillerNoodle were filling the need, we focused on other projects. Recently there seems to have been a break in the supply chain of these arms so we thought we would answer the call of our fellow CTS and CTS-V owners.

We've had this version of our trailing arms on our car for about three years now with no issues, they were on the car when we were at the drag strip testing our 8.8 rear differential kit, had no problems.

The arms we make now are essentially the same but we did make some improvement in the bushing department. Originally we reused the OEM bushing in the hub where the arm connects. Now we have made new bushings that are a 90A durometer that are grease-able while the arms are on the car. This way if the bushings start to squeak six months down the road you don't have to remove the arms in order to grease them. The mounting bolts at the hub end are drilled and cross drilled with a zirk installed. A few pumps with a grease gun and the bushings are quiet again. The other end of the arms also have grease zirks installed, these bushings are a 70A durometer due to the fact they act as a hinge when the suspension travels up and down. If there is a large enough demand for a spherical bearing at the front end of the arm, we will explore that option.

I'm not sure what the clearance is between the factory arms and the factory wheels are but if my memory is correct it's about ONE inch (dumb), with our arms you will have almost 5" of clearance. That's more room than you will ever need, but that's what we ended up with after we went around the lower shock mount. The brace in the corner of the arm has also been formed to clear the bottom of the lower shock mount portion of the hub meaning no grinding is required like arms offered by others.

There have been problems with the tubes that the mounting bolts pass through made by others of wide wheel arms, we did not make this mistake. Even the prototype set that have been on our car all these years had tubes with a .220 wall thickness. These new wide wheel arms have the same tubes and will not collapse when the bolts are torqued to 130 ft. lbs.

We are offering these arms with and without the bushing that go in the hub. For those of you that wish to reuse your factory (softest bushing on the whole car I might add) the arms are $375 +frt, with the new 90A bushing the arms are $435 +frt.

These arms are not on our website as of now (7-19-13), give us a call if interested or you have questions.

These arms have been a LONG, LONG time coming, these are happy days.

Hope you guys back East get some heat/humidity relief soon, I hate being sticky !!

Peace Out all, have a good weekend...........Max

 

[MotorMounts]

Fuzzy......I knew you'd have some negative comment waiting for the introduction of these wide wheel arms. I'm not sure why you have such an axe to grind with us, it really doesn't matter. The people that hangout here on the forum know that you are free-flowing with your opinion and also know that it's worth what you charge for it. Don't worry, you are not part of the "us" on these arms.

The adjustable, greaseable toe-rods will be discussed next week.

 

[MotorMounts]

Thanks Fuzzy, for reporting me to the admins as an advertising spammer which in-turn got this thread deleted. You are of the highest caliber.

Thank You Submariner409 for your understanding.

 

[MotorMounts]

Fuzzy... After re-reading your first two posts...they are not as inflammatory as I previously perceived them. If you feel that you were wronged by us or our parts, call me on Monday, I will refund every nickel including shipping. I would like to hear or re-hear your side of the story.

The shifter bushings have only one shoulder/lip (like the factory bushing) so they can be slid between the shifter rod and the mounting tube that they go in. A shoulder on each end would make it "troublesome" to install. A small picture with directions is sent with each set of shifter bushings. The shoulder of the bushing goes toward the rear of the car which captures it behind the tube that it pushes in to.

Call me on Monday, I will send you some money.

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Wasn't me. If I think you're spamming, I'll say it to your face.

10-4, on the "wasn't me", maybe it was the new guy with 13,000+ posts since a join date of 2011.

I see no pictures, i get an Invalid Attachment error

Ya, I figure the "no pictures visible" is part of my vendor status not being current. Expired yesterday. I'm pleased that Submariner409 is allowing us to have this much conversation on this thread.

 

[MotorMounts]

Sorry about that. The pictures should be back up now.

 

[MotorMounts]

I'll order a few sets tomorrow. I think these joints are a great option but don't forget that the price to manufacture the arms just went up $74 +frt a set. Just like you guys I analyze costs. The arms I had in my car for three years worked just fine with the original set of poly bushings. I'm just sayin'...........Sounds like we will be making two models available. Choice is good.

 

[MotorMounts]

honestly this is good and constructive criticism.

Agreed........... I ordered 6 of the spherical bearings form Rusty's Off Road. That's enough for 3 sets of arms. I know that's not a lot but I don't need more money sitting on the shelf. I don't normally pre-sell product, but when these three sets are spoken for and paid for I will order more. The new price for the arms with the spherical bearings in the end towards the front of the car is $425 without the rear knuckle bushings. With the rear greaseable bushing is $485. We found that these arms will fit in one of the post offices large flat rate boxes, I will pay the shipping. So the above prices include shipping.

Another scenario for these arms is a prepaid group purchase. If you guys can put together 12 guys that are willing to prepay, I'll sell the arms for $365 shipped with the spherical bearings and the greaseable 90A knuckle bushings. When 10 guys have prepaid I will order the bearings and start bending the tubes.

 

[MotorMounts]

OK, This has been proven to be one of those topics that will have everybody and their dog chiming in with their 2 cents and no one will agree with anyone else.

The only information I can provide is from my car. It has the the stock wheels and tire size (245-45-18). It is at the stock ride height, which means it is not lowered. The stock wheels are 8 1/2" wide and the sidewall bulge of the 245-45-18 tires is only about 1/4-3/8" beyond the edge of the wheel. The next interference (after the stock trailing arm) will be the wheel hitting the lower control arm.

With a slight bending of an un-welded section (in yellow) at the rear of the lower control arm an 1-1/2" of added width to the inside of the wheel can be had for a total of 10". No bending of the arm would be a close fit but there is a bit of modification available if required on a per vehicle basis. The next interference after the control arm will be the shock (near the top of the wheel), that clearance is 2" with no modification.

I'm not going to get in to what specific tire sizes will fit. Each of our cars is a bit different so I will be best for each person to validate their own measurements. That is not meant to be a disclaimer, it's just not that hard to crawl under your car with a tape measure to check clearances.

 

[MotorMounts]

That's a worthy investment!



Don't tell Fuzzy

 

[MotorMounts]

So....who is organizing the group buy? Safe to say Fuzzy is out!

Max, what would the price be for the arms in a group buy without the greasable bushing as I already have the revshift bushings?

Sounds like YOU are the Group Buy Leader (unless to can talk Fuzzy in to it?)

Group Buy Price w/o knuckle bushings $325

133k miles,On my 05 V slver, I have GC kit 500/550, 245/40/19f 19x8.5, 295/35r 19x10 ccw sp600 (Thanks for stepping up and picking up the slack) Making this Product. Received the CREATIVE STEEL trailing arms today, and having them Installed this weekend all redshift bushings,BMR Toe rods,McLeod RXT twin disc clutch.... Will post pics next week.... "He Who Hold the Gold Makes the Golden Rule"

Absolutely can't wait to see the pics.

 

[MotorMounts]

Max - Due to overwhelming response on the group buy, can we do more than 12 people or is that your limit?

I will build more than the original 12 sets. Nik.....add some more slots to the bottom of that list. We can do a half down payment up front, then the other half before shipping. As soon as I have 10 guys call in with their down payment, that is when the door closes on how many sets will be made this time. So if you are on the fence and want in on this pricing don't drag your feet too long. When #10 calls in it's over.

 

[MotorMounts]

So where do we sign up for the group buy?

Call Creative Steel to put down a deposit....you will be automatically put in the group buy. It's like magic.

 

[MotorMounts]

UPDATE on the project:


The tubes have BEEN cut, the gusset are cut, our super bad-ass new "CREATIVE STEEL logo" metal stamp will be here tomorrow (that we'll use to mark all our products with) I will stamp the gussets before forming and welding. The Johnny Joints will be here on Monday according to UPS.com. So that will be the day the actual fab work begins.

The request for the spherical bearings kinda caught me off guard. I hadn't done any research on the "Johnny Joints" so I didn't know which brand I wanted to use so we lost about a week while I waited for samples to arrive. Didn't feel comfortable spending $1000 -$1500 of your guys' money without seeing the merchandise first. I went with Rusty's joints. I liked the quality better than the other sample but knew that the "other" sample was made in USA (as advertised). Rusty didn't advertise that fact so I was in a bit of an ethical dilemma. Then I asked the secretary at Rusty's, she says they make them in house.........SOLD. I'm kinda old school on the "Made in USA" thing. I don't paying a bit more if I know I'm keeping one of ours out of the soup line.


Bottom line.... About two more weeks before product starts leaving here (powder coat will take a few days)


Could someone update the guys on ***************. I'm not yet a vendor over there yet. Already got my "you know what" slapped for talking too much.

 

[MotorMounts]

UPDATE:

The tubes are bent, gussets are stamped and formed. Weld-Cut-Fab with begin tomorrow at Oh-Dark-Thirty. Oh yeah, the Johny Joints arrived yesterday as scheduled.

Over, Roger, Copy-That

 

[MotorMounts]

How did you get arms before the rest of us? I was number 4 on the list...

This is hilarious !!! "Hey, What the $%#@^% is going on here"?

"Why is Lil421A getting preferential treatment"?



He's not getting special treatment, he bought a set of the arms with the urethane bushings at the front end of the arms. We've had those available since I first posted that we were making these arms. The group buy is for arms with the spherical bearings at the front end of the arms.


UPDATE :

The arms are finished being fabbed and will go to powder coat tomorrow or the next day. I want to send a few sets of toe rods with this load for the guys that wanted them in black.

 

[MotorMounts]

UPDATE:

Trailing arm sets have started to ship.

We shipped 8 sets yesterday to:

Nikds5, Vmapper, sssnake, stick1975, philistine, bradctsv, barrock69, and B_rocks_it.

We will put another load of them in the mail today and will update tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

[MotorMounts]

Here's the list of guys that got trailing arms shipped yesterday.

RavenLS6, ManofMetal, Dmax04V, Britt29, IDriveaV.


To answer the previous question....The group buy is over, but we have a few sets of trailing arms with urethane bushings in the front end of the arm, not the spherical bushings like the group buy version. We have the urethane bushing version in our car and had our prototypes in the car for three years. No problems to report.

 

[MotorMounts]

That was some fast shipping. Looks like they made it intact.

Trailing arms just went to the post office for the following:

DK, 1BadCTS, Dtrain and ItsaV.


If you are part of the group buy on these trailing arms and you are not listed on any of the three previous lists YOU need to call us. We either need final payment or your color choice or if you want the hub bushings included.

 

[MotorMounts]

What greaseis recommended for these and the tie rods? Do the ballistic joints need a different grease or everything the same?

There is a lot of conflicting info on this subject. Just to be safe I would stick to any synthetic grease. I bought a cheap Harbor Freight grease gun and put a tube of the Energy Suspension Formula 5 in it that I have marked "bushings only". I'm not saying this is the best grease or lasts the longest between reapplications but since our products come with grease zerks it's real easy to give a bushing a pump of fresh lube as required. And we know the Formula 5 won't degrade the urethane. This was my attempt to keep it simple.

For the guys that got our trailing arms with the spherical bearing in the front end, here is the link to the replacement bushings if or when you need them. http://www.rustysoffroad.com/builde...ts/rustys-2-5-forged-flex-joint-race-kit.html