Violent Running

So my ISIS suspension arm package arrived the other day and I finally got a free minute to start installing them.

The price on them was ridiculous, about 30$ cheaper per arm than comparable Megan Racing arms. Of course, for that price you can’t expect arms made out of a mermaid’s vagina, or welded by god’s own hand, but I’ve had a lot of sucesses with cheap parts in my past. 80% of the shit on my last car was knockoff, cheap, used, defective or straight broken so I have no qualms with trying out the latest, cheapest suspension package out there.

The arms arrived in solid packaging from Enjuku. Each arm was individually wrapped in “High Performance” plastic ^_^

The bumble bee yellow color was a nice touch, the powdercoat seems very very soft though so you have to handle the arms carefully during install to keep from scratching.

Unwrapped, they look like most low-price range tension rods. Which isn’t a bad thing. Tension rods are simple arms, there’s not a whole lot of magic and flash in them.

The end-links seemed pretty stout, moved very smoothly. They come with what appears to be a brass bushing. These are self-lubricating end-links.

The adjustment bolts spun easily and tighten strong. Again care must be  taken when using wrenches not to scratch the powder coat.

The arms came with no additional hardware (new nuts/bolts/adjustment wrenches), but at about 100$ per arm, do you really expect them to? Stock nuts and hardware work just fine. Used crescent wrenches for adjustment without a single issue.

Tension rod next to stock piece.

Installation was a non-issue on the passenger side. Luckily my tension rod brackets weren’t bent like everything else in this car. Stock nuts threaded with ease, stock bolts slid through without binding.

The driver’s side however, what a fucking nightmare.My control arm had apparently been hit with a Russian SK-429 Silo Rocket in it’s lifetime, and wrapped the lip around the top of my stock tenstion rod bolt. This metal is extremely thick and stout. It took some serious work with the sledgehammer/vice grips/crowbar and retard strength to get this to a point where I could remove the nut.

But, brute force always prevails. Once the metal was bent away, install was once again easy.

That took care of the front end components. So far I’m happy with them, only downsides are they are not as thick as the Kazamas I had before (150$) and the powdercoat isn’t as sturdy. I have some pretty gnarkill caster up front on the right side from what I assume is a previous drift accident with a K-Rail. Dialing some of that out is going to be key, and the true test will be to see steering response improvement I get from these. Next up I installed the components my car needed the most, rear toe arms.

Solid toe arms. I’ve used the SPL parts toe arms in the past, with the bend for low cars. These are certainly not the same arms, more on par with the Megan Racing parts toe arms. But for a lot less money.

The welds don’t appear to have any issue, no stacked dimes but no dirty or uneven welds either. I imagine I could get a better judge on the welds if the powder coat wasn’t so thick on them. All the hardware and adjustments moved with ease, with a center adjustment point on the arm making it a breeze.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but installation was once again simple. I do not like working on stuff other than my wheels and aero. So it’s nice to me when a part goes in quick and easy. I’ve installed arms that had trouble threading, had trouble fitting through stock mount points, or had a bunch of adaptors I had to switch out depending on what car I was using.

Unfortunately on this arm I did leave a scratch with my cheapo, chewed up socket.

Unfortunately, I had to stop there. Stupid work!

Next step, install the ISIS RUCA, ISIS tension rods and get a damn alignment! Then my car should be ready for some track use. I could care less what an arm looks like, what welds it has or what end links it uses, what matters to me is how it performs, and that is what I really look forward to finding out on these ISIS arms. Can a 100$ arm perform like a 200$ arm? Stay tuned!

Smoke break!