it's due to me being lowered. I'm at just a bit over 1" in the front. They recommend a Spherical Bearing in this location :-) Here's thier response:

Powerflex UK
We have seen this before on some Golf's which use a pressed steel arm as opposed to the cast alloy arm Audi use we don't get any problems. On the pressed steel arms the distance between the 2 sides that hold the bush in place varies and if not held tight enough causes the arm to move on the bush. One other problem we have seen is if the car has been lowered over 25mm the arm sits at more of an angle causing the bush to twist out as the sleeve is fixed in the bush.

Powerflex USA

Yes that is the reason. 25mm = 1 inch. Do to the poor tolerance on the casting I can't guarantee our poly bushing is going to work. The issue is the design of the suspension combined with the design of the our part when lowered. What VW is attempting to do is allow the control arm to pivot on the rubber bushing. If the control arm is oriented at 90* then the bushing stretches as the suspension moves. When the car is lowered you would need to change the angle of the bolt to compensate which you can't do. The reason it was designed this way is to have the bushing move with the part so there is less noise, vibration, harshness, but only within a narrow range of suspension travel. BMW does this on the E46 models in another fashion and bushing performance and life is very poor with factory equipment. Given the issues at hand I'd recommend finding a spherical bearing part if one exists for this application given the setup you are using. A bonded rubber part won't move in the arm, but given your ride height it will be wearing over every bump in an accelerated manner most likely.

I hope this explanation makes sense, let me know if you have any other questions. We can just issue a refund for the part at this point.

 

Great explaination, and the offer for a refund is unexpectedly nice!

 

And how much lowering is ok - none?
And blaming the quality of the *casting*? C'mon.
Not that I have much credibility in this, but I disagree that the the drop caused this, and that any drop will cause a bonded rubber failure - in fact the angle of the arm is more neutral/horizontal ('oriented at 90*') when the car is lowered by that inch and in further fact the overall travel is reduced when the car is lowered.
Anyway, sign me up for the spherical.

 

Hey, let them save a little face ; )

 

it's pretty apparent the angle is all wrong and when you look at the failed OEMS - the center bore is also deformed at this angle. So - hopefully I can get enough interest in the sphericals to make them somewhat reasonbly priced for a Group Buy.

 

More H2 Sport stuff, and to some extent (ugh) corroborates PF's comments...<ul><li><a href="http://www.eurotuner.com/techarticles/160_0612_et_2003_volkswagen_gti_mk4_18t/index.html">more stuff!</a></li></ul>

 

lol - I'd have been ok until they dissed the casting. ;-)

 

Spherical group buy? Where do I buy!!!!

 

I dont' suppose our hubs are the same as the mark IV's eh?

 

but hard to be sure it can't be made to work:

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/53277/0612_eurp_05z2003_volkswagen_gti_mk4_18ttie_rod_di sconnection.jpg">

This is the MK4 spindle above and below - if you compare to ours, you can see the tie rod end connects to it from the top (on the oem as well as this performance spindle), whereas ours connects from the bottom; can't say for sure if with the additional drop that ours can't just be spun around 180 and make the same connection (or if in fact there's an equal/significant difference between this performance spindle and our oem, since the design geometry of the two suspensions might be different and can't easily be ascertained from the picture comparisons). The other thing is the swaybar endlinks, which definitely wont work - either ours or the H2S; that would need to be a custom job (our swaybar runs under the drive shaft, the MK4 offsets to run above it; now, I don't know if you couldn't use a MK4 SB instead...).

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/53277/0612_eurp_24z2003_volkswagen_gti_mk4_18t.jpg">


This is a shot of mine, from the opposite angle:

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/53277/5_3_08_045.jpg">