2012YellowBoss

I installed the Maximum Motorsports camber plates and I have been happy with them. While installing the springs a few weeks ago one of the bolts that holds it in place up top snapped off. I take great care when working on my cars and in fact had a torque wrench on this when it happened. It snapped off long before I even got to proper torque.

I called MM and told them what happened. I was told they get this 2-3 times a week and I needed to send a copy of the receipt. After I did this I was told that the company would not warranty this, it was alluded to that this was my fault for over tightening it. However the guy I spoke with said he would go get the part himself, outside of what his Boss told him to do, and send it to me. I had to pay for the shipping.

I think it is pretty poor of them not to warranty this and I have to take the word of the person I spoke with that he did in fact do this outside of company policy. If they are seeing many of these break there appears to be a problem with the quality and placing blame on customers does not seem to be the best route to take IMHO.

Here is a picture of the stud that broke. I don't have the best camera but you can make out a flaw in the metal even to the point of it rusting in the middle and another flaw on the opposite side. Disregard the crushed threads on the side I put it in a vice to remove the nut even if it was not on there very tight.

Be careful if you ever need to remove these as the metal is not very strong.

12C/OBoss

wow that is terrible...and the guy that decided to take care of you at MM has assumed liability for this issue. Not good for MM in this case. I would take this to upper management because the rep you spoke with basically confirmed a known product issue that could possibly cause bodily harm or even a fatality if there is ever a total failure


I would have someone do an analysis of the stud to see its strength, maybe they received inferior parts and they could be held liable for a supplier screw up

2012YellowBoss

I offered to send the the part back to them when I was told it was most likely my fault for over-tightened it. They advised me they already have one from someone local to them and that "we do need to find out what the problem is with these". I hope they find the out what is going wrong and I think I will hang on to this piece so I can have it looked at someday.

Jack Hidley

I'd like to respond to some of the comments made by Mr. Johnstone in his post.

For the record, I've had no communication with Mr. Johnstone on this subject at all.

The person at MM who spoke to Mr. Johnstone didn't tell him that we were having 2-3 stud failures per week. He told him that we had seen 1-2 per month. Yesterday I looked into this and we have had an average of 1.5 failures per month over the last three months. I'm not going to discuss the number of these c/c plates that we sell per month, but 1.5 failures is a very low failure rate for the total quantity shipped.

When we first saw one of these studs fail, we thought it was odd. We proceeded to test the studs to several different torque tests. The only way we were able to get the studs to fail was by progressively torquing them in steps up to 40lbs-ft. This is double the level we tell customers to torque them to in the instructions. It is also much higher than the recommended torque level from the manufacturer.

We recently repeated these tests with some variables added to see if they could cause the failure. Nothing we did caused the studs to fail at less than 40lbs-ft of torque.

One thing we did notice from Mr. Johnstone's post is that the nut was seized onto the stud. It is entirely possible that there was a problem with the nut/stud interface that caused the seizure. Once this joint is seized, all of the applied torque goes into the stud itself causing it to break. The stud is not designed to have a high level or torque applied across it. It is designed to be loaded in tension. The torque the stud sees should be a result of the torque applied to the nut multiplied by a correction factor (much less than 1) due to the friction between the nut and stud. When the nut and stud are seized together, the correction factor is 1.

Mr. Johnstone's statement about MM not warranting the part is false. It was replaced under warranty. He clearly knows this as he didn't pay for the part. In the state of California, for warranty purposes it is presumed that each party covers the shipping costs in one direction. In most situations, we normally cover the costs in both directions, even though we have no obligation to. We do this out of good will. In this case, I'm sure the decision was made to not pay for the shipping since we don't believe the part failed due to a defect.

With regards to the photo of the stud posted. There is no way to do a failure analysis from a blurry photo of this part. I agree that there is something that looks like rust in one location. For rust to form in this location, it would need access to oxygen, which means there would need to be a crack or large void. I don't see any evidence of a crack. In fact I see the opposite. There are no beach marks at all, which are usually present after a bolt with a crack fails. The bottom line is that no reliable conclusions can be drawn from such a photo.

If Mr. Johnstone wants to send us back the stud pieces and the nut, we would be glad to look at them.

If we ever find any evidence that there is a problem with the c/c plate or any part of it, I'll post it here.

Jack Hidley
Maximum Motorsports Tech Support

JeffIsHereToo

Another example of why where I work we LONG AGO determined it's just easier to do right by the customer, in their eyes, and move on. I suspect the time it took for you to write this note, on multiple web forums where this has been posted, was more $$$ of your time than the bolt would have been to replace day one.

Lesson learned I hope!