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Thoughts on Apex Engineered 8.8 subframe


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Yeah I am definitely not buying a large "bolt-on" kit for my car like these without seeing the instructions that come with them first. I'm fairly certain Apex and TTT are not scammers, they are very new to the market and as a result nobody has done detailed write-ups, videos, or how-to's with these kits yet, and most of the pictures I've found are marketing pictures from their websites with a few amateur photos or videos of them installed.  It sucks to think that scammers are here on the HybridZ forums. Thanks for the warning though,  sometimes it's easy to get super excited about something new for our cars and make a move on it before taking the time to protect ourselves financially.

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I couldn't find anything with a quick look but I seem to remember that they have a larger diameter axle. 

 

One last look found this, below, showing a larger pinion shaft also.  The whole "Super" thing causes a lot of confusion.  I bought a Ford pickup so have seen a lot of it on the truck forums.

 

https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/threads/the-super-8-8.8880/

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I have the TTT rear end kit. Obviously I don't have the custom 8.8 rear cover, but I'm putting in a short nose R200. The parts are amazing. The machining is great at the coatings seem good. That said, it comes with absolutely zero instructions. There are labeled bags of fasteners and the setup is relatively simple, but a set of written instructions with torque values would be nice. 

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On 4/24/2020 at 10:36 AM, NewZed said:

 

Tell them that you'll buy one after you see pictures of the product actually installed in a car.  That's reasonable and sensible.  

 

There was a guy on the forum a few years ago that was welding up some very nice looking intake manifolds.  But he didn't have any data showing how they worked on an engine.  He took many orders, collected lots of money for a Group Buy, took forever to get the first few out, they didn't fit, and he ripped off many of the people who never got a manifold.  He lived the good life in the meantime, getting married and probably using all of his ill-gotten money for his wedding.

 

Some people mean well but just can't get it done.  Some people are just trying to make some money over the internet.  Scammers.

 

Search for "Senza Pari" on the site and around the internet.

 

https://forums.hybridz.org/search/?q=Senza Pari

 

I think comparing Senza Pari to Apex is a bit of a low blow.

 

Apex has moved a large amount of product and Ohm is actually responsive to customer concerns. They are a business, rather than a guy. As far as documentation, they are on the same level as T3, which has been the standard for a long time in Z car aftermarket. From looking at Instagram and facebook, Apex is mostly selling front subframes, control arms and steering knuckles, makes sense they wouldn't be selling a huge amount of the conversion kits.

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20 minutes ago, NewZed said:

It was an example, not a comparison. The difference is subtle, but real.

 

I disagree. The different between taking peoples money and running off is and providing a product that people have actually received, installed and used is not subtle whatsoever. 

 

If you want to complain about no user install guide or a lack of user available FEA/testing numbers, that's a whole different can of worms that almost every small company in the automotive aftermarket is not going to be able to satisfy. 

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On 4/24/2020 at 10:36 AM, NewZed said:

 

Tell them that you'll buy one after you see pictures of the product actually installed in a car.  That's reasonable and sensible.  

 

There was a guy on the forum a few years ago that was welding up some very nice looking intake manifolds.  But he didn't have any data showing how they worked on an engine. 

 

, they didn't fit,

 

You're overlooking the main point of the conversation.  No evidence of the parts actually in a car.

 

You can always find something to  be indignant about on the old internet.  If you  want to really help Apex out tell them to put some pictures of the parts installed in a car on their web page, or Facebook, or wherever.  Even better, parts installed and in use.  That would actually be useful to them.  Parsing my post to protect their reputation from the 6 people that might actually see it doesn't help much.

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The sad truth about aftermarket stuff in general... is that it's crap. I've worked in motorsports, including development of aftermarket components, and I've worked at an automotive OEM developing production vehicles. The time and money spent designing and validating OEM components is multiple magnitudes greater than anyone in motorsports or the aftermarket. Now one may say, "but we're replacing parts that were designed 50 years ago". That's true and I agree, there's room for improvement but that still takes a lot of thinking, time, and money. The John Coffey's of the world understand this very well, that's one of the reasons why John moved on from running Beta Motorsports to work at a high-end Porsche shop. Those guys are willing to pay. The classic Japanese market is slowly working on catching up...

 

More power to the folks that try to make it in the aftermarket stuff but the vast majority of customers just aren't willing to pay the money that it would cost to produce well thought-out and validated components. I'm not saying that there's ill-intent, it's mostly well-meaning enthusiasts who may have some design and fabrication skills and want to carve out a niche in the market. This market has a lot of maturing to do. This is why HybridZ is, or certainly was, such an interesting corner of the internet. There was a core group of folks gathered in one place with a level of awareness to be able to understand the limitations and trade-offs of what they're doing.

 

 

All of this is to say, this is why I maintain a healthy pessimism when looking at shiny things.

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Instagram is rife with photos of their knuckles, control arms, front subframes. A little less so with these big rear suspension conversions, but they're out there. Makes sense for a part that costs a couple thousand dollars. 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7-IwogJtBi/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Eizm5pSz7/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9j1UvHnyoq/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-N_tOFHCBG/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-0kBOXntko/

 

I am personally using their tie rods and knuckles, after snapping a Arizona Z Car knuckle in half.

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I'd be interested to hear a more in depth discussion of why mounting the diff and rear control arms to the two largest pieces of hardware in the rear of the car (that go through the rear frame rails) isn't such a good idea? Maybe something that integrates the locating holes. 

 

On my car, the factory dropdowns were woefully inadequate. Pretty flexy in lateral loading, the only real thing preventing shift was pressure from the opposite wheel. It's even been suggested by several members on my build thread to connect the factory mustache bolts to the rear control arm pickup points for added stability in cornering. I've boxed the factory dropdowns, but potentially moving to an Apex style rear subframe for additional stiffness. 

 

I'm also intrigued by the rear control arm style this affords, using inner heim joints to free up bind, rather than the traditional bushed mounts. That lower mounting hole is probably too low for most cars, but if you went up with the car for rally use, might be helpful!

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TTT also have very few photos of any of their parts fitted on a car. I don't doubt them as a company at all, but I like to see exactly what I am getting and how it fits so I can run things through in my head and decide if its for me. If they have more photos of actual installations I'd be more likely to buy stuff.

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I don't want to crap on anyone's products, but my take on this is that if you're going to redo the mounts and possibly fit a different differential, you might as well scrap the whole rear end and start over. Doing so gives the chance to rectify a bunch of stuff:
1. Center the wheel in the wheel well

2. SLA instead of struts

3. Big brakes

4. Get rid of the original Nissan rear suspension mounts and mustache bar

5. Use real uprights for a strong spindle mount, not referring to the OEM "uprights" hanging down in the back.

I haven't yet seen anyone design a bolt in rear suspension that does all of these things the way that I would want them.

TTT uses stock style rear control arms and struts. AZC makes aluminum versions of the stock stuff that has all the same problems as the stock stuff, and is more likely to break as we saw when CobraMatt broke his years back. Apex went with a weird combo of Z32 brakes IIRC and I don't remember what stubs and the front diff mount didn't look great IIRC. 

If'n I were doing this, I'd have a frame that bolted into the chassis where the front diff xmember, mustache bar, and uprights bolted in. It would be a full cradle that fit an 8.8 and would use a commonly available outer stub with a common size bolt pattern, either 5x5 or 5x4.5. Would be SLA, and would use 930 or 935 CVs. Would fit commonly available rotors, probably 12.2 x .81 and would fit GOOD brake calipers, probably radial mount. I wanted to do this when I had the diff biz, but ran out of money and had to shut it down. :(

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