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#15 by gc3 on 20 Feb, 2014 15:29
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i just wish i had come across this a couple months ago when i had the subframe out.
its so easy to add material when its out -
#16 by Bowtie7 on 20 Feb, 2014 19:37
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I was the other and maybe the first one. I don't have pics on this computer but it made a nice clean break on both sides. I heard a clanking noise as I turned a slow corner and thought something was loose in the spare tire area. Got to a stopping point and saw the camber link was hanging like a limp noodle. If anyone wants pics right away you can pm me and Ill text you pics. It is fixed very nicely now and feels great again.
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#17 by RX7V8Builder on 02 Mar, 2014 21:13
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Thanks Joel.Got my gussets a couple of days ago.
they arrived just in time.
Today I was under the car for normal maintenance oil change and decided to take a closer look at the subframe. This is what I found:
I will be welding the plates this week.
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#18 by frijolee on 03 Mar, 2014 12:36
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Thanks for the picture, that really demonstrates the notch and stress riser I was talking about. Our gusset plates capture above and below the pinch weld on both sides so the gussets won't have the same concentrated peak stress point. Between that, the added section height, and more than doubling the thickness via reinforcement we should be good to go.
As others have mentioned the top connection of this link is dramatically reinforced by comparison. However, if anyone does find an issue up top, please let us know. roninspeedworks@gmail.com -
#19 by andrewb70 on 19 Mar, 2014 11:42
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When I did my cobra cradle, there was a reason we didn't use the back of the stock rear crossmember as a stress point for controlling upward pinion movement under power. The bar that ran under the diff picked up the two pinion mounts on the diff case and carried the load forward to a location that was more inline with the pony where the rear cross member attached to the body. Hopefully the reenforcement plates will do the trick.
Andrew -
#20 by wes kiser on 29 Mar, 2014 23:26
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When inspecting car this afternoon, I found the vertical subframe link mounting ears torn. I had already been sent the reinforcement ears, guess they have to go on now. This was only 3 passes on slicks (stick shift turbo 4)
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#21 by Supe on 30 Mar, 2014 09:43
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E-mail sent, so glad I found this before the subframe was back in the car!
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#22 by RX7V8Builder on 30 Mar, 2014 12:01
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#23 by Supe on 30 Mar, 2014 17:33
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I'm glad it ties into the flanges like that. If it had gone straight to the body of the subframe, I'd imagine it would crush it in after some time.
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#24 by Supe on 05 Apr, 2014 11:06
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Got my reinforcement brackets welded in yesterday. I left the original bracket there as well, since I had to drill them out to fit the 1/2" bolt that goes with my camber link. They lined up perfectly after a slight tweak in bend angle and should do the trick nicely. Thank you to the Ronin guys for sending these out free of charge, even though I'm a second-hand user of the kit. Killer service right there.
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#25 by frijolee on 08 Apr, 2014 12:36
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You're welcome. Thanks for the pictures to those who have been posting up as well. We do put a great deal of effort into our parts (even gussets) and I always love seeing it when the fit comes back excellent. I added a few shots to the original post.
Standing offer to any user of Ronin products (whether original owner or not): if you ever find something that you think could be improved shoot us a line at roninspeedworks@gmail.com. At a minimum we try to roll those things into our future production. -
#26 by Supe on 16 Apr, 2014 20:38
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Some in-car reinforcement shots. They were right on the money. It's also worth noting that when swapping from the TII diff to the 8.8 swap, I didn't have to touch the length of my camber link at all, it was dead nuts on.
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#27 by frijolee on 04 Dec, 2014 18:34
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New topic, but still related to service bulletin's on the FC 8.8
For the past several months we've been looking into a few FC 8.8 halfshaft failures that seemed to occur at relatively low power levels (<500 rwhp). Here's one:
http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=5084.msg269114#msg269114 Admittedly this was a little confusing because we had shafts holding up well on cars making hundreds of HP more. Full disclosure: there have been a total of three bars which have failed out of something like 50-60 FC 8.8 kits we've sold. That's 100+ shafts on the road, all in cars seeing hard lives (they sprung for an 8.8 rear end after all).
In all three cases the broken shafts were replaced free of charge (they carry a lifetime warranty from our supplier that we pass through to our customers), we even threw in extra CV boots to get folks taken care of.
Effectively the process went like this: If this was one shaft only we could write that off to some internal metallurgic flaw. The second failure says something more significant was going on, hence we had the first two failed axles sent back to us for further review. We examined them closely, took a bunch of pics for reference, and then sent the shafts off to our manufacturer for lab testing. That was already in works with the first two shafts just before the last failure was posted online (link above).
Post mortem analysis is extra work for both Ronin and our supplier that's a pure overhead expense so I sympathize that this was a pain to track down. I was following up yet again pushing for answers about a month ago. Results were still slow in forthcoming, but instead they offered to do a proof load test to prove this wasn't something systemic. As such, Ronin sent them back two brand new shafts from our stock and had those tested.
The good news is that I finally got results back today from both lab testing and proof load testing. Both of the new bars which underwent proof load testing passed with flying colors. Both broken bars in question hadn't achieved the specified hardness level. The follow on lab tests showed that the material on the two broke bars wasn't 4340 hence they didn't take the heat treat and hardness expected. Our supplier apologized profusely but stated they were confident that this was an isolated incident where a few bars of inferior material had been accidentally mixed in with their 4340 stock. That means the material on a few bars wasn't truly better than stock hence why "standard power" v8 cars could still manage to break them.
Are there any other bars out there with wrong materials? We don't know. The good news is that we have an answer as to what's been going down, and some evidence that our 8.8 kit is what we say it is. In the meantime we have three things we can offer:
1) If you want to have your shafts proof load tested--it's a percentage of rated capacity--please tear them down to bare shafts and send them back. We'll have our supplier test them (they've offered). Any bars that survive will be returned and considered known good. Any bars that fail testing will be replaced. That said, tearing down shafts is a bit of a pain, at a minimum you need need new boot clamps etc.
2) All Ronin halfshafts have an unconditional lifetime warranty. The batches where the issue seems to originate were built more than a year ago, so if your car hasn't blow one, it's unlikely that will. Call it in-field proof load testing. This is what I'm doing on my own car.
3) If you're concerned about your shafts and running events where a failure would be terrible, but also don't want to tear it down without good reason, we have plenty of shafts from the most recent batch which we just tested and are known good. We can sell you a spare or spares so you'll have extras standing by.
Shoot at a line at roninspeedworks@gmail.com in regards to any of the above if we can help.
To the three guys who broke, thanks for giving us the time to run this to ground. We appreciate our customers and want to be sure we're treating y'all right.
-Joel Payne
(for RSW) -
#28 by Supe on 05 Dec, 2014 09:37
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Glad to hear you got the cause figured out. Hopefully the supplier will take some additional QC steps to ensure there are no future mishaps. Coming from the Power Construction industry, I know just how easy it is to have materials get mixed, or worse - to have a CMTR for those materials, and it doesn't come close to matching.
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#29 by fc3sls3 on 12 Jan, 2015 02:11
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I like that you guys are making your kit, however I brought this issue up years ago and you guys pretty much told me you had engineers who have already designed it and I was full of $%$@.
Anyone running a ford 8.8 IRS conversion should run the Delrin front sub frame bushings, reinforce these tabs and run the ADJ link bar from companies like AWR Racing. The link bar with the 8.8 Should not be used to adjust camber any more, as now it will mess with pinion angle of the FORD 8.8.
I was the first one to help the Drive shaft shop design moly axles to work with this swap in a FC. If you are interested in strong axles PM me and I can give you the info.
Cheers!
