BrownDogg

Negative feedback for K Sport. I bought their front camber arm which is also the front upper a-arm on an Infiniti G35. Part # CKNS04

I installed these camber arms on my Infiniti G35 back at the end of November 2009 and had them on the car for about 4000 miles in total. I installed coilovers on the car and noticed that the powder coat was chipping off of the a-arm right around the adjustable camber plate. I further examined the arms and noticed that they were actually bent which is why the powder coating chipped off.

I notified an employee that works at K Sport of this issue and I brought the car into K Sport and put it up on their lift so they could see the bent a-arms. K Sport at first said it might have happened because I was lowering on just lowering springs instead of coilovers so the car had more body and moved around more causing them to bend.

If that was the case, it shouldn't matter because these camber arms were designed for lowered cars. There is absolutely no point of having these arms unless your car is lowered so that makes no sense. They stated they were not going to warranty them because they have never seen this problem before.

I took the a-arms off the car a few weeks later and noticed that they were in fact a lot more messed up that I originally thought. They bent in multiple places which should definitely not happen. As you can see in the pictures below, they bent a good amount and it is clearly a failed piece of equipment for my car. I took the front a-arms/camber arms into K Sport and showed them how bad they bent and they still said they were not going to warranty them because they have never seen this issue before.

The most logical reason they haven't seen any bad a-arms is because the average person would have never noticed that they were bent. The a-arms still functioned on the car and the car was still completely drivable with them. The average person would buy these arms, take them to a shop and have them installed and then aligned and never look under the car to see them. You can't really see them once they are on the car anyways.

To me this is a big safety concern. If they failed and the metal bent that much in that short of time span, imagine how badly these would look after being on the car many more miles. 50K-100K miles they probably would have snapped off. What if they would have completely failed while I was driving or drifting at the race track? The damages would be horrific let alone my safety in jeopardy.

While I was at K Sport comparing my defective camber arms to a new set that they had on the shelf. One of the BRAND NEW never installed a-arms was bent in the same place as mine before it was even installed! So this is clearly a weak spot in the design of this product.

This just goes to show how poor their customer service is. I have bought lots of K Sport products in the past. I have had their coilovers on my 1993 240sx, coilovers on my 1996 240sx as well as every suspension component offered by K Sport on my S14. Coilovers on my G35 as well as every other suspension component they make for my car. I have always had good things to say about them until now when their product failed on me. It appears as though they cut costs on the quality of the materials being used to make their suspension components because these a arms bent in almost every possible place that they could have. It really makes me angry knowing that I have owned so many of their products and have said so many good things about K Sport and how their quality has changed and they finally make a solid product but apparently I was wrong.

This product that I purchased new retails for $570! I sure would like to think that a camber arm that costs that much is not going to fail on me. I bet Cusco, Tein, Spc, and other companies products do not fail on them like this.

I can assure you that these did not bend due to my driving being careless or something along those lines. I am a very careful driver and am always on the lookout for potholes. If only 1 side was bent then I could see K Sport blaming the failure on me but since both arms are bent in the same places, this is clearly an issue.

Cliff notes for those that don't like to read:

1) Bought K Sport front upper a arms/camber arms.
2) K Sports product failed on me
3) K Sport refuses to warranty their defective product
4) I am stuck with almost $600 paper weights

The Pictures:

You can see all the spots in the arm that bent by looking at the powder coating that is cracked at each bend.

Picture of the arms before I installed them so you can see that I did in fact purchase them brand new and never installed.




Here are the pictures of the bent cheap quality arms

sdsnybny

iTrader: (1)

Looks like they failed do to another part of the suspension (looks like the end of a bolt) putting pressure on the control arm where its not supposed to be. I noticed the arc shaped gouges/impact marks on the same side on both arms. Looks like it repeatedly slammed/scrapped the arm causing it to bend/cup prematurely. Since no other powdercoating is coming off the rest of the part I'd say the repeated impact caused it to flake off as well.

Thorium06

iTrader: (5)

oh i cant wait to post on the experience i had with krapsort. i freakin love their costumer service. ill be sure to hit this up after class today

BrownDogg

Well I am running their coilovers as well and stock everything else. I only have K Sport products on my car so they shouldnt fail due to them hitting the stock arm. Poor design is what it is

Zsanz

o sheit that a arm needs jeezus

pno02

"4) I am stuck with almost $600 paper weights"

yeah that sucks...you should see my pile of expensive paper weights from racing a late model.....

Ksport Branden

Let me start by introducing myself, I'm Branden, and I'm a sales rep at Ksport USA.

First...our warranty IS NOT transferrable. These control arms were given to a friend of Nicks and purchased off him by Alex. Without a receipt there is no warranty. Warranty's are possible because of the profits from the initial sale. This is basic business practices, try to go get your Sony TV warrantied without your purchase receipt or warranty card and see what happens.

Alex has come to us twice with this problem. The first time he came in he gave us some information that he somehow failed to mention in his post.

With that in mind, the following pics will tell the other side of the story, as there is obviously always two sides to every story.



In this pic you can clearly see where the upright off of the spindle has contacted the control arm. As Alex had told us, he was on a set of lowering springs at a drift event prior to installing our coil overs and had a large amount of body roll. The first time he brought his car to us, we put it up on the lift and found that the excessive body roll caused this contact.




Heres a shot of the upright where it made contact with the control arm.




Side shot



Car on the lift with the suspension unloaded showing the relation of the two parts.

The amount of force that'd be applied at that point during contact is enough to bend ANY manufacturers arms.


It wasn't chipped off, it was rubbed off by your upright. See the pics above

With that logic we would never warranty any new problem brought up to us because there is a first time for any type of issue, product defect or not. The reason for not warrantying the arm is NOT because we haven't seen it before. It wasn't a defective product, it was a improper suspension set up previously installed on the car. Which is a moot point anyway as you didn't have a warranty to begin with.

Suspension arms are meant to articulate only so far. Regardless of whether or not it was designed for a lowered vehicle, if it articulates too much, it'll make contact, either with the body or the upright.

Prime example of misinterpretation of information. Again, you didn't have a warranty to begin with, and your car and parts chosen prior to the coilover installation caused this to happen.

Thats a pretty large assumption to make. If you noticed them, I'm sure others would too.

Again, your prior set up was to blame, not the quality of the arm.

Missing an important bit of information about said control arm. It was damaged during our move. We're running a sale on these arms affected with only finish blemishes. We had a cart with all of our suspension arms roll off the moving truck as we were backing down the loading dock. Near 1000lbs worth of arms came crashing down on each other. Some fared better than others.

So you've owned every suspension component we make for the S13/14 and you had ZERO problems with them. This one product gets damaged due to your prior set up and all of the sudden we are a junk product? Odd how that works. I've personally helped you in more instances than one, like when your tire rubbed your coilover on your 14, I gave you new spring isolators and installed them myself at the shop, over looking the fact that your tire rubbing the coilover is not something thats covered under warranty. Sounds like our service isn't the problem here at all. It's your misunderstanding of policy. I'm trying to curb my personal opinion on this as much as possible, but it seems like you're upset because you aren't getting special treatment. You know our customer service isn't a problem. You've called me about Ksport products while I'm at home on my own time and I still helped you out.

Any one of those manufacturers arms would have bent under the same circumstances.

You were the one who gave us the info on the lowering springs and excessive roll. You did however, fail to mention to me when we spoke yesterday the findings from your previous visit. You can consider any info given to you by me to be null and void as I didn't have the whole story. The first time I've seen those pics I posted above was this morning.

1) you bought them second hand from someone who got them for free, warranty is not transferrable. If you had gotten them from us, there would have been paperwork stating this.
2) Your previous suspension set up caused your Ksport product to fail
3)The product is not defective
4)You didn't pay 600 for those, they don't even MSRP that high.

Bottom line is this, Alex is unhappy that we wouldn't warrant his camber arms, understandable, but our product wasn't defective, it was improperly used. Instead of bringing this up to us (the content of our conversation during the hour plus he was here, was maybe 10% about the bent arm 90% BS'ing), you find it necessary to make a negative post about us on multiple forums while leaving out key factors. You even stated to me that you didn't' plan on using these again since your stock arm adjusted your camber back within factory spec.

Based off of that information, I can logically deduct that you're upset you can't make your money back by selling these after causing damage to them. No one here understood why you brought them back in after having accepted the fact that your previous set up caused this contact thus damaging the arms. When you and I spoke you failed to mention to me about the contact the upright made with the arm.


I'm sorry that you feel we left you out in the cold, but we are only adhering to the policies that we put in place to remain profitable and provide service to those few that have an actually defective product.

For other responses to any other rebuttals by alex can be seen here and the responses by us...unfortunately I have a busy week and I just don't have the time to visit every forum he posted this on...http://az240sx.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=46967

Kanchi

iTrader: (4)

http://www.ksportusa.com/asp/camber_...roduct_id=ct01

Where on your site does it say that these should only be used w/ Ksport coil-overs?

to quote your site:

I understand needing paperwork to warranty products which makes his argument for replacement moot, however going forward you (K-sport) may want to revise your site as if I had purchased these first-hand, I would be expecting a new set, regardless of my suspension set up.

Ksport Branden

These don't need to be used with our coilovers at all. The set up on his car previously allowed for too much body roll. So much so, that it allowed the upright and A-arm to come in contact when he was doing a drift event. There are a couple key factors that lead to them making contact and bending.

1) The excessive body roll
2) Initial ride height
3) Inadequate damper/spring combo
4) The camber setting on the A-arm adjusted all the way out causing the upright and A-arm to over lap

One thing to keep in mind, we sell about 10-30 of these a month, and the only warranty claims we've had on these arms are one guy who sheered off an adjustment bolt as he used an impact gun to tighten them, and this one. The adjustment bolt we replaced. Had we known how upset Alex was, we would have worked him a deal. He'd dealt with us on a few items and traded parts with myself and another employee here. We'd have been more than willing to sell him a new set of camber arms at our cost, but he didn't express to us that he was this upset. We were very surprised to see these posts by him.

EAmon

"Our forged ball joints and bushings are built to withstand extreme forces from many racing applications and accommodate extreme angles after lowering the vehicle."

might want to a disclaimer on your site then. Extreme Forces and Extreme Angels. That sounds like drifting.

Ksport Branden

Well it's not normally a problem...with a properly set up suspension combo, it wouldn't have been able to compress as much as it did. The damper couldnt' have been applying any resistance to the spring and allowed it to travel beyond what would typically be seen.

With coilovers the stroke of the shock and travel rate would be much lower than that of a lowering spring/shock combo. Progressive springs, will allow for more body roll than a linear spring which is whats typically in most coilover applications.

Kanchi

iTrader: (4)

So in other words you recommend having coilovers on the car to avoid a similar situation from happening again?

alienvictim

judging from the pictures alone these products look like fail to me, the amount of material holding the arms to the adjustment plates are far to thin.

when you look at it in all of these pics posted you can clearly see that a maximum (added together) of an inch of metal of obviously sub par metal is all that is holding the car up?

i have seen oem parts go through hell. lowered or not and have yet to see this kind of terrible construction.

i kind of figure that being such an important suspension piece, something else should have broken/bent before this ever did.

i call quality shenanigans!!!!

Ksport Branden

Not necessarily, I'd say to keep this kind of thing from happening you should always check for clearance as well as maintain the components already installed on the car.

Zsanz

meh on ksports defense.
im a 3rd year mech engineer majior.
ive designed 3 sets of suspensions via autocad/solidworks for offroad baja vehicles used in competition. all though the plate appears thin the forces it can handle when the correct and PROPER torques are applied im sure far surpass the quality control.




......just sayinnn

Zsanz

alienvictim

lol fishies!

3min3m2

I kinda agree that the product is appear to hold less then i personally would like it to(if it were my vehicle) and less then the "ad" says it will.

I think a replacement set should have been made available, but through an initial conversation.

KSport: Are you saying his dampers were damaged or inadequate? I'm trying to get a better understanding on your "defense".

BlackKnightxB

I've had some engineering classes back when I was in school. You cannot tell any such thing by looking at the pics. the shear and distortion on the places are clearly because of the bottoming out. the weight of the car pushing down on a plate with only a limited field of contact will bend it. it could be inch and a half thick and will still bend with repeated impact and pressure...

PS> I don't own any K-Sport products, but have heard only good things about them and I'm considering picking up the coils they make for the xB2. this thread does nothing to diswade me from that thought.

Kanchi

iTrader: (4)

^I would be interested to see if there was any distortion then on his stock ones. If there were I would agree, if not tho....