al's gen 1 a arm weld broke

AndySRT · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:16 am

well it happened today the weld broke on my drivers side gen 1 Al's a arm. luckily i was only making a right hand turn and the wheel tucked in instead of popping out. just another watch out for those of you with gen 1 a arms. I will be calling them tommorw to see if there is anything that they can do.

JJsTJ · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 8:09 am

Curious, how much time/mileage/ how many off road trips on the set?
Glad it happened going slow and nobody got hurt.

Sport · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 9:33 am

I think have gen II or III but aren't they all the same until this new gen in red came out.

Mine has the Ball joint spot welded to prevent backing out, not sure what gen that is.

AndySRT · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:18 pm

been about 7-10 off road trips and about 40k miles on them. i just started taking it apart and the weld is defintly not threw to the base metal enough.

Inc · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:24 pm

That doesn't seem like that much wear and tear to me. Glad you weren't hurt or others too. Is JBA going to warranty them?

AndySRT · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:26 pm

just called and left a message.

tommudd · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:57 pm

I bought a set of used 3s and when I cleaned them up I saw that the welds had some cracks in them well beside them, Marlin asked to see pictures , then said to send them in , next thing I knew I had a set of 4.5s in my hands.
He does stand behind his work
not saying for sure he will but he did with me :wink:

JL Rockies · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:01 pm

The main thing is there were no deaths involved.....

JJsTJ · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:01 pm

I paid to upgrade a set. Sent in Gen 2's or 3's (that I had spot welded the ball joint myself) and got the latest version. Had to put one of them in my hi-lift jack to spread the arms apart as they were off by about 1/4" and wouldn't fit into the pockets. Hopefully that will be the last time I have to mess w/ the arms though.

KW AV8R · **Posted:** Thu Mar 12, 2009 2:09 pm

I have about 30k on my set of Gen III arms and too many off-road trips to count (including Moab) and mine are still holding strong. Once they give out (which they will eventually) I'll upgrade to Gen 4.5.

*Disclaimer*
BTW, I inspect them kinda regularly and by 'give out' I mean when the welds start to show signs of failure. I'm not going to wait until they fall apart at 75mph.

ohv_kj · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:27 am

i had a pair less then a year and broke...i wheeled about every weekend...it took about 10 months

ohv_kj · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:28 am

tommudd wrote:

I bought a set of used 3s and when I cleaned them up I saw that the welds had some cracks in them well beside them, Marlin asked to see pictures , then said to send them in , next thing I knew I had a set of 4.5s in my hands.
He does stand behind his work
not saying for sure he will but he did with me :wink:

those were the ones...lol...sorry again :oops:

AndySRT · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:15 pm

well i ended up having to pay to upgrade to the gen 4.5 arms. luckily i got my order in before the site went down today so i could grab the phone #. so hopefully they ship soon and i will be back on the road next week.

Inc · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 4:27 pm

Pay full price or was there any discount?

JL Rockies · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 4:31 pm

AndySRT wrote:

well i ended up having to pay to upgrade to the gen 4.5 arms. luckily i got my order in before the site went down today so i could grab the phone #. so hopefully they ship soon and i will be back on the road next week.

That's an interesting outcome. I wonder if the swap would be free if you suffered a brain injury after a major wreck caused by the failure?

tjkj2002 · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:40 pm

Just remember Marlin did not own JBA during the GENI/GENII/GENIII UCA's,when he bought the company he updated to the GEN3.5+'s.Just be lucky a discount was applied to a product he did not make or even have any say in production.

JJsTJ · **Posted:** Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:36 pm

tjkj2002 wrote:

Just remember Marlin did not own JBA during the GENI/GENII/GENIII UCA's,when he bought the company he updated to the GEN3.5+'s.Just be lucky a discount was applied to a product he did not make or even have any say in production.

It was my understanding that Marlin was the maker/designer of all of the arms For Al. (which is why he went ahead and bought the JBA business From Al)

AndySRT · **Posted:** Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:37 am

I got the upgrade discount on the set of arms.

al's gen 1 a arm weld broke

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