SPC Upper Control Arm

First & foremost I know what SPC recommends as a maintenance interval and all that. I’m just thinking a bit too much and need some clarity to help with that. I had these installed couple months ago and this is the first true weather they’ve had & with that being said do I need to grease these things every single time I see “wet” road conditions?? Obviously when driving the under carriage sees a lot of moisture whether it’s from rainy or snowy roads. All in all I love these, it is my daily driver that sees no true wheeling just dirt roads for hunting & fishing! They’ve done well and I greased them upon installation and was planning to do it at next oil change.

 

Even going beyond their recommended maintenance they don't last - bushings trashed within 30-40k no matter what kind of driving conditions it sees, and the new style bushings are not really replaceable by a regular shop with regular tools - they recommend you send them back for refurb, and even if you do want to do it yourself they're always backordered.

Do your best to get your money's worth but be prepared to be mad about their longevity no matter what you do. If you actually need the extra caster, there are other options that don't have the problems SPC does.

 

I installed a set of SPCs on a customer's truck and the ball-joints were trashed within 2 years. Like really bad. Literally 1/2 inch of play back and forth at the joint

 

I've had SPC UCA on mine for a few years now. Grease them at every oil change and off road frequently. Zero issues.

 

Thank you for the input. That’s my plan was just overthinking the added water from roadways and what not.

 

Just keep an eye on the rubber boots and make sure there's no splits anywhere. Water and dirt intrusion will kill any ball joint.

 

The ball joint is decent, grease with the recommended grease every 5k and you will be fine.

Those dog shit xAxis inner joints are about as good as a jar of sand in the middle of the Sahara. I have had 5 sets of SPC arms on my truck in the course of 50k miles and every time the xAxis joints would develop slop... after having smoke blown up my ass for the 3rd time going "we have had a bad batch / revision to the joint" I let the brand new back from warranty arms be someone elses problems and went back to stock. I hope you have a better experience than I had.

 

Same here, 2 bushings and ball joints trashed after 6K miles. replaced them with JD Fab UCAs, SOOO much better.

 

I had SPC on my Tacoma for about 10 out of the 11 years I owned it.

Upon installation, I found one if the ball joints was either machined wrong, or for the wrong application, as it wouldn't fit into the spindle. They were reluctant to send me another one since I'm not a professional, but they did over-night another ball joint to me.

About 5 years later, the bushings on one of the UCAs started to go. The original bushings were the metal sleeve/hard rubber type. I cut out the old bushings and replaced them with their new poly bushings.

Other than that, those UCAs didn't give me any issues for the rest of the time I owned the Taco.

 

Just a heads up they discontinued the spec ride bushings 12-23-23

 

Grease them with the recommended grease every oil change (5k miles). I've been running SPCs since 2016 and have over 65k miles on the original ball joints and bushings. My truck isn't light with armor and a GFC and it spends a decent amount of time off pavement in addition to it being the ski vehicle in the winter so at least twice a week it's driven on brined/salted roads.

 

I installed spc arms and have about 10k mi on them with no issue. However I have heard many complaints here on tw so it got me thinking. I have had good customer service with SPC by calling and emailing them. For advice during installation and when having two different shops perform an alignment. I have found them to be very helpful.

So today I emailed one of the technical specialists/ Alignment Trainer (that's what it says in his email) at spc and asked him for feedback in terms of the longevity of the SPC upper control arms and issues they have seen with the busings going bad. Here is what he said...

" The failure rate for the xAxis joints used as bushings in these arms has been higher than we like, but at the same time, not astronomically high. Recently, it was discovered that the tolerances could “stack” the wrong way and allow for internal movement of items which should not move. The xAxis in the arms right now have been assembled with the redesign. I once had an Airtex rep state they were expecting a 5% failure on their fuel pumps, and they deemed that “acceptable”! We’re nowhere near close to that and are hoping the redesign will lop a lot off that.
While the xAxis kits are available for an end-user to install, they do require a press of some sort. Most people do not have access to a press, so they take advantage of the switch-out program. If you have any issues, please let me know. I will start a CRM file for the parts, but will eventually need to get Customer Service involved as I don’t have access to the ordering section."

I then told him my arms were bought in early 2023 and asked if my arms had the redesigned xAxis joints in them and he responded with..

"I don’t think the redesigned xAxis were introduced that early. The only real way to tell is remove the rear nut and washer of those long bolts and check the lot number on the end of the xAxis. I wouldn’t recommend doing that until/unless there’s an issue because it will be a lot of wasted effort if the joints never have issues. There is a lot of speculation as to why some are failing while the majority are good. Maybe there are sublots of the internal pieces which are more prone to dimension issues. Maybe one mould cavity of the die is slightly different. Maybe it’s a “perfect storm” issue where many factors need to align.
In any case, let’s not go looking for issues until there are symptoms which are indicative of an xAxis. They are not all going to go bad."

 

What are these other options?

 

From my contact at SPC who has been with me through FIVE RMA's of xAxis failures over the course of 5 or so years. Their latest "redesign" was in November of 2022. They pulled all stock of xAxis joints and moved forward with the updated machining of those joints and ball joints. I cant say as to the quality of the post Nov 2022 joints as when I replaced my arms in August of 2023 i simply refused to put them back on.... 6 upper control arm swaps in 50k miles was enough.

Theres a reason why dorman, moog etc etc sell SPC arms at a discount... they are all the discarded arms of SPC.

 

When did you last have SPC uppers? Or rather when is the last time you had them fail on you?

 

2023 was a bad year for SPC, I warrantied quite a few. The non-greaseable updated versions seem to be lasting better.

 

I got mine in June of 22 and had installed last of June/1st of July. But I don't have 5k on them yet but just had service done and had them greased so I'm on the 5k schedule.

 

Grease em every oil change. My UCAs have over 100k miles on em.

I just replaced my balljoints for the 3rd time a couple weeks ago.

A lot of people bitch about these UCAs, but I wouldn’t expect any aftermarket balljoints last more than 50k miles so…..

 

Add me to the list of people that had failed SPCs and switched to JD Fab UCAs. SPC X-axis bushings were clickety-clackety for me since day one and the ball joints completely failed in less than 10k miles with excess radial play. Always greased way ahead of schedule but doesn't matter if the design is trash.

JD Fab on the other hand are damn near bomb-proof. Toight like a tiger. So far I'm very happy with them.

 

I've had mine on since 2017-18? No problems,grease them twice a year.