Had an A-arm failure on my Prosport

[NASA racer]

Lower front A-arm snapped causing some damage to the car. Looking back on it, I think these may have been the original A-arms from 2000 so they're way beyond their life expectancy. Noticed the inside was heavily rusted.

So don't forget to life your components conservatively! I was lucky in that the failure happened as I was slowing down to get a gap on a qualifying lap AND I was at one of the slowest parts of the track.

Video of the lap before and the failure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7g583UxcyU 

[dsl2]

Eeeek! Lucky it happened at low speed as you say. Was there any denting or creasing evident on the tube at the failure point at all?

[RobC]

Yup common failure, good practice to check them for hair line cracks as part of the pre-race checkup. Kerb hopping can increase the failure rate as well.

[NASA racer]

I checked these pretty regularly but didn't do a super careful inspection prior to this weekend.

You can bet that I'm going to check them even more carefully in the future though!