Fatigue or just BAD FABRICATION WORK?

[New-to-240z]

Hello Everyone,

 

  I recently did a front and rear conversion on my 73' 240Z. The rear end had a 240SX subframe installed. Up front I had them fabricate in 240sx coilovers. Now, when they did this everything seemed fine. I rarely drive the car and I recently was getting it ready for its first day on the track. I tightened everything up, made sure I was ready to go and took her for a spin.

 

  While out and about, I pushed the car somewhat hard to make sure nothing came loose or broke. Well, low and behold I hear a loud noise and pull her over to the side of the road. Open the hood and what do I see.  . . 

 

So, I was really hoping that I could get some insight from everyone here. I've had other problems with the shop that did the work, namely the front end will not stay straight and always pulls left or right after its respective turn. So, I've been fighting with them for almost 1 year, and with this happening and the quality of work. . . I may have to take them to court.

Edited January 27, 2014 by New-to-240z

[OldAndyAndTheSea]

It looks like it broke on an aftermarket weld.

 

 

At least to me.

[madkaw]

Not pretty or effective. Looks like flux core welding

[seattlejester]

How high of a spring rate are you running?

 

To be honest I am not sure you have much of a case. 

 

It is custom fabrication using non original parts, and unless they have a warranty policy you can be kind of out of luck. 

 

It does look like some pretty shoddy workmanship. Looks like it ripped out whatever material they added.

Edited January 28, 2014 by seattlejester

[z240]

The cause of your steering problems is very likely a loose rack that shifts after turns. The most common reason for this is using 240 poly bushings on a 280 rack. The bushing width on the left side (near input yoke) is wider on the 280 racks. Or its just loose.

 

About the failure, its bad welding that gave way. Never seen anything like that.

[LLave]

That is pretty interesting. It looks like they re-topped the factory towers, and did so poorly. But notice how the factory metal is also tearing. Probably because they cut into it a little bit, like a tear here tab. Then when their welds failed, it put too much stress on the factory metal tearing it. The work done is also just plain ugly. I mean my fab work is not exactly beautiful but that looks no where near professional. I wish you the best of luck in getting that resolved. 

[JMortensen]

I think they cut out the entire reinforced section at the top of the stock strut top. If you look at a stock chassis there is a cup up in the top of the tower which is probably .080 or .100 thick steel. It appears that they removed that section and then welded the camber plate right to the sheet metal. Not good.

 

If you fix it I would suggest reinforcing the strut top.

[BluDestiny]

The butchered that shock tower and cut wayyyy too much out to be safe. 

[str8pipez]

The edges that are smooth and pulled away as shown in the first two pics look like they were never welded which would explain the torn sheet metal below. Those pulled apart and the rest went with it!

Edited January 28, 2014 by str8pipez

[RebekahsZ]

I'm going out to my shop right now to start building a strut brace!

[johnc]

Poor fabrication work.  All the strength was cut out of the strut tower.  Post the name of the fabricator so we can all avoid the shop.  They are going to kill someone some day.

[z240]

I can hear their excuses now..  "The adjustment knob hit the hood when we closed it, so we had to chop the top off the strut to lower the plate to make it fit. We had no choice!!!. That and we couldn't afford to refill the MIG gas bottle that day, so...."

 

Let this be a lesson to all you young'ins out there about what not to do.

 

Let the forces of negative social media befall these cretins at your earliest convenience. Start with their facebook page...

[New-to-240z]

Everyone. It is greatly appreciated an I will be using a lot of the information here to fight them on the work. 

 

@seattlejester : The work that was paid for has been in question since it was first done. Luckily my brother and father both own their own law firms and both feel that my life was put in danger and the work performed was inferior and is subject to scrutinizing. I have given them ample time to resolve these issues and as such if they can not resolve/repair the work to satisfactory, I will have a reputable shop resolve the problems and all associated welds. All costs will be paid by crappy workshop plus any fees associated. 

 

I have hopes for this shop as they BUILD DRIFT VEHICLES, and $100K+ cars. So, one way or another this will be fixed. 

 

Anyone else have any information/opinions on the look of the welds. 

 

This shop has also done work on 3 other Z's (basically the same work my car had done) so I want to contact the owners of those Z's first to make sure they are aware of the work provided to me. 

[New-to-240z]

How high of a spring rate are you running?

 

To be honest I am not sure you have much of a case. 

 

It is custom fabrication using non original parts, and unless they have a warranty policy you can be kind of out of luck. 

 

It does look like some pretty shoddy workmanship. Looks like it ripped out whatever material they added.

 

The coilovers are the Megan 240SX coilovers. Others have moved to this setup (on this very site) and have had no problems thus far and they even track their cars! I take mine out probably twice a month, and haven't even had the chance to really enjoy the car  

[madkaw]

Any reason you haven't named the shop?

[NewZed]

When you say "track" do you mean open pavement to "drift" on?  And have you hit any curbs since the work was done, or let someone else drive your car that might have?  Did you bottom out the shocks, or do they bottom constantly like a bad Honda?

 

The work definitely looks bad, both in design and execution but the failure mode looks like there's more to the story.  That gap at the failure point is big.  Does the gap close when the front end is lifted or stay open?  And have you checked the inner control arm mounting points to see if there's not something else broken?  Was the lip of the fender bent when they did the work or did it get bent when the failure happened?

 

Hard to believe nobody told you that worked looked terrible.  Fair for a home garage first-timer, but not from a professional shop.  Thanks for sharing though, it's a good story.  Post more pictures.

[RebekahsZ]

Was your suspension bottoming out and hammering the car?  Send us a picture of your car in side profile so we can see if it is a low-rider.

[Hypertek]

With the way they installed the 240sx camber plates, they probably didnt even need to weld anything on the towers.. 

 

Credit to the owner of this picture, i forget who that was. These where proper bolt in camber plates, but i suspect something similar could have been done with the s13 plates, chop them to size, redrill new mounting holes, than cut area on the z towers.. at least this way it could be alot easier for those with less welding skills.

[heavy85]

Good news is you probably found the reason for it to pull ...

[seattlejester]

The people on this site, at least all the people I am familiar who have S13 coilovers have camber tops that are welded either to the underside or on top of the existing location (with the inside slightly removed) with the pillow ball mount. Or have pillow ball camber plates that are bolt in, but still to the factory strut top.

 

For your install, it looks like they cut out the top of the datsun tower and lowered the whole mounting point by a few inches (the strut tower is tapered, so they lowered it to gain the extra width for the wider bolt pattern as well as maybe make room for the adjustment knob, and then made a new piece of metal to install the factory s13 coilover top (3 wide bolt pattern). As Jmortenson and johnc have pointed out, they cut out the reinforced top (if you look at the stock tower, it is at the minimum double layered in that area), and then proceeded to weld fairly poorly (porous looking welds) the pieces together. 

 

Here are the main points.

 

1. Really glad nothing catastrophic happened. Glad it was found while you were putting around instead of on the free way or somewhere else. 

2. Those are really bad looking welds. Either flux, or non shielded mig with some evidence of grinding and maybe seam sealer involved. The fact they thought it was ok to do is a bit scary, I agree either shoddy or careless workmanship. 

3. Yes by having the modification fail there was indeed a risk to yourself. And yes, the right thing to do would be to have them pay for a suitable repair, as long as you paid full market value (as in you did not get a discount or a hookup etc etc).

 

However...other members are raising some good counter points.

 

1. If you track the car, you are pushing it quite hard. Even factory parts break when you push it, let alone aftermarket parts shoddily grafted onto non factory locations. Where have you tracked the car, any off track excursions?

2. What is the ride height that you run the car at, or the spring rate. A picture would really help us out. If you ride the car low and have stiff springs with the dampeners turned up, then they could also say that you used them not as intended. An easy counter argument would be, what spring rate are you running. 10k? That is nearly 10 times more then stock, of course it would break! 

3. I know it is hard to swallow, but it is a custom install. It really isn't the traditional way that modification is done. Thus, they also have the defense that you were a pioneer/test bed and had taken responsibility for the possible failure. Now if you gave them instructions to do it one way, and they did it their own way without permission, there is something there.

4. Possibly the most important, it doesn't look like their weld failed, it is the factory sheet metal that tore out. Their design was bad and may have caused that to happen, but that would take an engineer to prove, their weld that holds the coilover to the strut is intact. Without a prior picture or a during install picture where it shows they cut into the origin of the crack, they can argue that the piece that they worked on is problem free and that the chassis given it's age is the culprit.

5. If you had problems with the workmanship, you shouldn't have been pushing the car at track days etc.

 

I agree that you should see if you can find the other individuals and see if the shop did indeed do the same modification in the same manner to their cars. It would be evidence for you, and a very needed warning for them.

 

I am just playing devil's advocate here. If you do plan to litigate, I would rather you do so and get this resolved rather then having them raise any of the counter points and having your case dismissed right away. It is your burden to prove that they were negligent without a doubt and caused unreasonable risk to limb and life. All they have to provide is a waiver, the lack of a receipt (if you got a discount or paid in cash), or any of another million things since nothing actually happened to you physically.