SPC UPPER CONTROL ARMS.. YAY OR NAY?

I’m in the market to pickup some aftermarket upper control arms later this year.
SPC UCA was one of the ones that I was interested in.
However after watching this video I’m now starting to steer away from the SPC adjustable UCA.

What are your guy’s experiences, thoughts and opinions on the overall product itself? TIA!

VIDEO LINK:
https://youtu.be/oqDqHOcTo5I?feature=shared

 

After having a set fail under 10K miles and then basically ruin my tires due to cupping, and seeing as how the company has gone through multiple ball joint and bushing designs and still has failures like that, I have to say my opinion is to buy something else.

 

Jesus I had no idea that the company had gone through multiple variants of their UCA..

 

The current version is also not really user (or even most shops) rebuildable on the bushings, which notoriously fail early and often for a lot of people, myself included. Yeah, sure, they're good about doing warranty/rma replacement with a core charge, but that's a pain in the ass, and you're still subject to frequent backorder delays.

I ditched them after two pm extremely premature failures, ate the loss, and went to Dirt King tubular/BJ uppers. The hyperadjustability of the SPCs is cool I guess, but unless you have an unusual setup (fixed LCA cams, for example) you don't need that feature to get a good alignment - the DKs have extra caster built in, enough to push you out to +4.0 easily if you want or need it, and if not you can still reach factory alignment.

 

I have had JBAs on for 90k miles zero issues.

 

I went with JBA because I didn't need all the adjustability of SPC plus you need a good shop who understands how to use them or it's a waste.

 

SPC had a bad batch of BJ's and bushings around covid. The play came from the bushing and ball joint themselves and had nothing to do with how they are adjusted. I guess it was just poor quality control on the manufacturing that resulted in tolerances that were out of spec. So not a design flaw from what I've been told by SPC.

Anyone who bought or had theirs replaced around that time are having early failures on the BJ and bushings. They are really good about replacing them though. And apparently the QC issues have all been resolved as of Nov 2023. But I think a lot of people were getting warranty replacements before the issue was fixed and have had more than 1 set fail on them because of this. So they don't have the best reputation obviously. And honestly it's still early to say for sure if all the problems have been solved.

I had a set fail on me after only a year of light use. So far so good on my replacements though but it's only been like 3 months. Hopefully everything is better now but people will be rightfully a bit gun shy on SPC for a couple years.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about their newest arms yet. But to the fella that said the bushings aren't user replaceable, I disagree. I replaced a set of the x-axis bushings and I thought it was pretty cool that SPC sells the replacement bushings with a press tool. Took me maybe 30mins after removing the arm to change em out.

 

Guess that's new? Ish? I was straight up told that the X-Axis stuff was not considered replaceable unless it was by a shop that had a (quote) "biiig press and tooling". Sounds like they're at least trying to address problems. My bad time with them was pretty recent, and if we give good faith to all claims (some guys have zero problems, some guys have whack-ass problems) and the timeline, I would bet that there have been a lot of continuous revisions to a product that SPC is keeping as a single part number (the UCAs in question), with maybe QC problems or maybe (intentionally or not) using the warranty system as field testing on revisions, or maybe some of both.

Anyway I'll take my tinfoil sherlock holmes hat off, just throwing in another $0.02 while I wait for pizza. Cheers.

 

I'll add one more comment and then jumping off this train. Lots of other threads, just pull up your ol' trusty Googl'r and type in "site:tacomaworld.com spc uca" and read to your heart's content.

No doubt SPC are very adjustable and popular. They seem to have a good idea with "sealed" ball joints and rubber-ish bushings. Lots of happy customers, SPC customer service is very good, but if their product is superior then why:

• The original arm design was full tubular, then half-tubular/half-forged, then fully forged. Why the changes if so good?
• The original bushings were rubber and failed, then they switched to some other jank "spec ride" bushings which failed, then they changed to "X-axis" bushings which also fail. Why the changes if so good?
• The original ball joints...well honestly I don't know. But they changed some parts of the design, possibly the boot, and those have failures (like the ones I had). Those were greasable, now they are not greasable. Again, why changes?

Before anyone comes back with "hurr durr company is smart and they make improvements" well yeah they have to because gimmicky stuff that they test on customers like we are guinea pigs is not really great. So you can miss me with all that noise.

Many UCAs have barely had changes in decades but they don't have the SPC adjustment for camber. Other arms with camber adjustments typically have heim joints which for us people in the salt belt is no bueno (though some now have "sealed" heims so maybe hope exits). Either way that adjustable camber is a magic gimmick to help people avoid smashing pinch welds and cutting the body mount which is fine but let me tell ya if you stick around these here forums a couple years you're going to listen to all of us giving you naughty and awesome ideas aka bigger tires aka bad mamma jamma mode and you'll end up there anyways.

Now that I've ranted that I feel like the heretic on the street corner shouting "THE END IS NEIGH!" but trust me all ye unbelievers, do not run from these words, embrace the truth and be set free of the UCA magick and witchcraft!

 

I ran SPC arms on the FJ for about 20k

They ate ball joints and bushings about every 8k miles. After the 1st ball joints gave up the ghost, I lubed every 2k…..no help.

I changed to Dobinsons……

 

I didn't realize they went through so many variations on their ucas. I have the old old spc ucas. I have about 60k miles on them only thing I've changed is the bushings. But since I'm doing dk lcas I've also ordered dk ucas with bj. Cuz salt belt.

 

I bought spc's in 2020. I've since realized both ball joints are failing. Around 40,000 mi on them in 4 years of about 95% on road with those miles. I emailed the company yesterday. I will see what they say. This is a very premature failure to a very critical point on the truck.

https://youtube.com/shorts/2tbTccQt_Es?si=08NBcDA-En2y1JE6

 

I've just learned that my SPC ball joints are toast after buying in 2021. I will be switching to JBAs after reading this thread. Very disappointed in the SPCs.

 

JD Fab
https://jdfabrication.com/collections/gen-3-tacoma-16-6-lug/products/tacoma-2016-upper-arm

 

Hard pass mine made it 8k and every joint was dead, moved to dirt kings and havnt looked back

 

So I got my replacement ball joint for the SPC UCA. And looking at it, they now ship a "maintenance free upgraded" ball joint. It doesn't have a grease fitting up top but is instead capped off.
Has anyone had experience with this "maintenance free" ball joint and getting better life from it? Seems like a step backwards to not allow it to be greasable. Although I'm wondering if I could just simply remove this plug and add a grease fitting.
http://www.spcalignment.com/images/pdfs/SPC_New_BallJoint_Flyer_0723.pdf

 

Idea is excellent. Execution is terrible.

I had issues with both ball joints and bushings in mine, so I swapped for heimed uppers as I wanted to keep the adjustability.

 

Yeah that's the updated design apparently. Too much room for error allowing people to grease them on their own is what I was told by SPC. They said the vast majority of warranty claims were from improper greasing and they didn't want to start denying claims so they took greasing out of the equation.

I asked the same question about the grease fitting. I guess it's not that easy. There is another plug inside the boot that plugs the bleed hole that the old grease gets pushed out of. You need to remove both but getting inside the boot to do it isn't really possible without damaging the boot. You also likely void the warranty.

I'm 7 months into my replacement set with the sealed BJ and so far they still perform like new. They've only used the sealed ball joints since November though so still too early to say for sure if they are better.

 

hey thank you for that outstanding info! i'm going to throw these on and see what happens. hoping for the best and glad that yours are holding up well so far. I'm hoping mine do as well. pretty bummed they would not warranty my original ball joints however with such an early failure