Toe Link Advice

[Digimap2k]

So I spent a lot of today replacing the rear wheel bearings. Whilst in the area I had a good poke around the toe links and can't decide what to do. It's a V plate S1 elise with aluminium hub uprights. Road tyres and not tracked but quite hard road use round the peaks most days. Joints on the toe link are of the captive ball variety with conical spacer, all moving freely. Look like original parts to me.

So do I:

(a) Pretend I never read any of the toe link fail threads and get on with my life.

(b) Spend the £300 + geometry from hangar111, elise-parts, elise-shop etc

(c) Spend the £500 + geometry on the spitfire kit.

(d) Replace just the end that tends to fail.

[Jonathan E]

Always one of the first things I do when getting an Elise, last two have had Spitfire kits fitted and although they're a fantastic bit of engineering I'd be the first to agree that's it possibly overkill on a standard road based car. My car spends most of its time on the lovely Welsh roads so not unlike your Peaks roads but much smoother surface I had the ££'s at the time hence the Spitfire kit.

[Martin R]

There is also option e) which is replace all the joints as they are old and as its a road car?

[Digimap2k]

Thanks, I did consider replacing all the joints (option e) as I do like to keep it original, came in at £300 for the four, maybe I need to shop around a little more.

p.s. I can't be the only one but when I googled and saw spitfire engineering I thought, "Oh, that's interesting WW2 spitfires have toe links". Idiot.

[Digimap2k]

Ah, now the penny drops, the uber expensive £97 ones are original lotus parts so its actually

OEM Parts
Inner = 2x£27.54
Outer = 2x£28.74
Rod = 2x£35.94
£184.44

Lotus Parts
Inner = 2 x £59.35
Outer = 2 x £97.56
Rod = 2 x £35.94
£385.70

That £184 option is looking attractive now, thanks Martin R. 

[Martin R]

I doubt i would replace the rod personally? It is after all a straight bit of steel. I would rub it down and give it a paint  

[Digimap2k]

Agree with that completely, I was getting a bit Trigger's broom on the problem. The saving on a couple of rods is half way to the cost of a small parts blast cabinet!

[Thomas Harborne]

I never track my car and my toe link failed. Standard road tyres too. I use it for pottering around Birmingham B roads at the weekend, maybe a few long trips on the motorways. As Jonathan said it probably is overkill but atleast you'll have piece of mind. Luckily for me i wasn't going very fast when my toe link failed. 

[Jonathan E]

Agree with Martin, oem are fine as long as you keep and eye on them, but as I said, at the time I had the money to go for the Spitfire kit, seemed daft not to.

[Spitfire]

Hi There

I trust it is OK if we just explain a couple of points as just comparing initial purchase prices alone is a little false, without taking service life and quality into consideration the prices do not mean much. Most Spitfire kits btw are £329+vat only the S1 ally upright is higher due to the bracket and plinth setup. This price is also cheaper than kits supplied with NMB bearings and we still have superior bearings as they were designed specifically for this application.

You can buy a really good toaster for £40 and if you have to replace it in 3 years you probably won't care too much.

If you bought a £100 Dualit toaster you would expect 10 years minimum and even then you would receive a repair service.

Over a period of years the Dualit actually becomes the cheapest option and in the meantime you have had all the advantages that the extra quality brings in terms of function, reliability and aesthetic design, yeah OK beauty is in the eye of the beholder etc  

A replacement bearing on a budget kit will probably cost £30+ it needs to be fitted and then the car needs to be re-geo'd, lets say £100 all in? Not quite so cheap now and some hassle involved, most seem to be discovered during the MOT failure, of course you still have 3 more of the original, now partially worn bearings......

How much you pay for labour charges will vary but it can be seen that it won't take long for the initial price to increase by ever increasing replacement parts and labour costs, i.e in four, five years time* it is unlikely parts and labour will be the same as today.

An alternative thought process is to purchase a kit with custom made bearings and a 100% service record since they were introduced into the kits over 6.5 years ago, further they are backed up by a 3 year warranty. The rest of the kit is made from aerospace aluminium alloys 7068 and 7075 which make it the lightest and weight for weight easily the strongest as well. It will last the life of the car as it is made from superior materials and better protected than the car itself, in the meantime you do not need to service it and for a road car you can probably expect a bearing life considerably in excess of the 6.5 years. Furthermore the kits have residual value, Chris at Lotushardtops recently upgraded his setup to the new bearings and sold his first generation kit (2004) for over of £120.

If you were just comparing metal bars from A supplier to metal bars from B supplier it is harder to justify any price difference of course.

But you're not.

 

Thank you

 

* You may consider 4-5 years is OK for a bearing but we don't.

[Martin R]

6 hours ago, Jonathan E said:

Agree with Martin, oem are fine as long as you keep and eye on them, but as I said, at the time I had the money to go for the Spitfire kit, seemed daft not to.

I have a Spitfire kit on mine as i do sprinting and trackdays. The main point is people never check the OE ones on old cars and are then surprised when they fail. I did a number of trackdays on OE toelinks BUT i checked them for rotation and tightness before and after every one.

[MilesH]

20 hours ago, Martin R said:

I have a Spitfire kit on mine as i do sprinting and trackdays. The main point is people never check the OE ones on old cars and are then surprised when they fail. I did a number of trackdays on OE toelinks BUT i checked them for rotation and tightness before and after every one.

Many years ago I remember going to see Steve at Gugliemi Motorsport and he said to me, you have two choices you can either keep your standard OEM toe links (which at the time were fine) and check them every so often to make sure they are ok and only replace when necessary. Or you can spend £350 and fit uprated ones and largely forget about them. Both options will give you the same outcome, the choice is yours.

I kept mine standard for 2 years and did quite a few trackdays, and finally uprated when a second hand set came up.

 

[Spitfire]

It is probably worth remembering that the concept of uprating the toe links on the Elise series with a strong hint that the OE ones are limited came from Lotus themselves in the form of the motorsport kit. This was recommended for all cars using high performance tyres.

It's unlikely Lotus were only considering worn OE links as the reason to change, simply the extra forces generated by sticky tyres took the OE links (joints) too far up the fatigue curve along with the captive nature of rod ends compared to ball joints which always allow the link to detach when failed.

Certainly for a road car on normal tyres the EO setup works well, shearing of the joint spigot and the detachment of the joint housing from the fixing are both due to excessive wear though you need to be careful of the second, this is not easily detected as there is no stiffness in the joint, just the opposite in fact. It hasn't helped with the influx over the last 10 years of a series of manufacturing plants shifting to China. Not too long ago you could be sure that SKF, Delphi etc meant a certain standard, these days you need to be more careful.

On track it's different and certainly with sticky tyres even Lotus recognised there is not enough margin.

 

[Digimap2k]

Thanks for the clarification, spitfire. I do take your point and I'd be the first to fit your kit on a track or race car. In this instance we're talking about an old S1 currently in completely stock factory spec so in my specific case the extra cost isn't really warranted and will probably devalue the car in the long term. For that reason I'm going to consider 20 years long enough and just swap out the four joints and use the saved cash to fund some other work. 

I saw Martin's post with the snapped outer link, that struck me as odd I thought it was the inner ones getting heat battered which caused the issue. I can see how that outer ball joint design would pretty quickly fatigue the threads where Martin's snapped if the ball where seized and the rear suspension was travelling.

Ta for all the help.

p.s. And yes, sorry, I didn't mean to misrepresent the price of your product, in my case I do have the ally uprights and couldn't see myself not going the whole hog on the nicer long bracket. Nearer 300notes for most folks as you already said.

[Spitfire]

On 7/22/2017 at 11:05, Digimap2k said:

Thanks for the clarification, spitfire. I do take your point and I'd be the first to fit your kit on a track or race car. In this instance we're talking about an old S1 currently in completely stock factory spec so in my specific case the extra cost isn't really warranted and will probably devalue the car in the long term. For that reason I'm going to consider 20 years long enough and just swap out the four joints and use the saved cash to fund some other work. 

I saw Martin's post with the snapped outer link, that struck me as odd I thought it was the inner ones getting heat battered which caused the issue. I can see how that outer ball joint design would pretty quickly fatigue the threads where Martin's snapped if the ball where seized and the rear suspension was travelling.

Ta for all the help.

p.s. And yes, sorry, I didn't mean to misrepresent the price of your product, in my case I do have the ally uprights and couldn't see myself not going the whole hog on the nicer long bracket. Nearer 300notes for most folks as you already said.

No problem at all.

If you are not tracking or on road rubber it's unlikely you will have any issues with a good condition OE setup.