Ballade Spherical Bushing Kit : Requesting Feedback
 

The NASA TT5 rules require taking a .2 power to weight ratio hit if you run aftermarket balljoints, roll center adjusters, or spherical bushings. I am planning changes for my car for the 2019 season and since I am already taking the points for aftermarket balljoints, I figured I would replace my 107k mile 13 year old bushings on my purpose built TT car. It has seen about 28 track days since spring 2017 when I first took it on track. The owner prior to me also used it as a track car.

The Ballade Sport kit is considerably cheaper then the competition and from the pictures it looks to be a well thought out solution for our cars. I reached out to Ballade today to request some references for who use them in the TT and road race world but most of their kits went to HPDE and autocross drivers.

Has anyone used them here and have any long term track data on them? How has maintenance been? Any failures? Any other known issues?

Thank you in advance.

Was talking to a very quick autocrosser yesterday at NYST about spherical bushings, while that direct and precise feel is desired, there is a lot to be said for a certain amount of compliance for longevity of other components.

I'm sure I'll get blasted for this comment but I felt it held some merit. Everything is a trade-off.

That's true. I am on a more frequent maintenance cycle though compared to most other cars. Shock rebuilds every year, every 2 years on hubs, bearings, studs, etc. The car is fully inspected in detail every event.

We have these on our car, along with KW clubsports, Gendron front bar, buddy club lower ball joints and at times we run 18x10's with a huge offset.

I LOVE how the car handles with these, but as mentioned there may be a longevity issue.

I have broken 2 front spindles in my last 3 events, after the first one we assumed fatigue since the chassis has 160k miles on it and this isn't a common issue, so we replaced both front spindles. I had a 1 day event in Gingerman with no issue, and then at the end of my last lap at a one day event at TMP I broke one of the brand new ones in the exact same spot.

Now I did hit a curb kinda hard with that corner earlier in the day and that could have had some bearing on it, but it wasn't a massive impact.

We feel there is something going on with the whole system that's causing these failures, but we're not sure what yet.

You could can just purchase this full set of arms with Blacktrax sphericals already installed.

https://www.s2ki.com/forums/r-c-part...icals-1188125/

I would do that if I was in the market for sphericals. However; I can't speak for the Ballade product itself - it's a personal preference that is not grounded in data.

$2500 vs $900.

Not worried about the labor as these projects give me something to do during down time in the winter.

Complete Rear End Master Spherical Bearing Kit AP2

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.s2k...d74e1d63d5.jpg


$599.99

Pics? instagram somewhere?

Thank you for the valuable feedback. The rigidity of the spherical is cause for concern for me in terms of excessive wear on other components. Can you post some pictures of the failure?