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Super sano SPL upper control arms. CNC billet aluminum, high quality bearings, adjustment of camber with billet shims and fine adjustment of camber and caster in the bearings. We feel that this is the best part available on the market for the 350Z. |
To make everything adjustable up front and to get rid of squishy rubber upper control arm bushings, we replaced the upper control arm with a fully adjustable CNC machined billet upper control arm made by SPL Parts. We feel that the SPL upper arm is the best on the market bar none. The body of the arm is CNC machined from solid billet aluminum and pocketed out for minimum weight and maximum stiffness. It is much stronger than the stock forged but spindly aluminum upper arm.
This bump on the spindle must be removed or the arm could hit it at full stroke. |
The arm is linked to the car’s unibody via two adjustable QA1 Endura high quality American spherical bearings. Both camber and caster can be finely adjusted through these bearings by screwing them in and out. The instructions give you guidelines on where to set things before installing to make your alignment go faster. The rough camber adjustment is done at the balljoint end of the arm. You roughly set the camber via some billet adjustment shims that go between the ball joint and arm. Then the camber as well as the caster is fine adjusted at the spherical bearings.
Howard uses and angle grinder to remove the offending bump. |
The SPL upper control arm gives us a racecar level of adjustability in the front suspension and is just about mandatory for serious track work with a 350Z. The level of quality is unmatched in this part as well.
All gone! |
In the rear, we needed way more adjustment than the stock Nissan eccentrics would allow. After lowering the Z we still had over 2.5 degrees of rear negative camber even with the adjusters turned fully positive. This was way too much for optimal forward bite and cornering in the back of the car. Even with our urethane bushings there was still way too much compliant rubber in the suspension. Like the front suspension we wanted to eliminate compliance in the upper links which are mostly used for location and don’t affect the ride as much.
The stock upper arm looks spindly compared to the SPL part. |