Joe,
I know I have seen Heim joints on dragsters and race cars. My son and I built a torque arm for the rear end on his Toyota that is suppose to keep the rear end/springs from wrapping up when doing slow crawling in rough terrain.
I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it myself...two times this setup literally pulled the back out of the Heim joint. One was an aluminum bodied unit. We then went to a steel housing and it did the same thing.
These were quality 7/8" rod ends. Maybe there was some screw up in our design, but the point I'm trying to make is that when they did fail, it wasn't a critical steering issue.
Stuart
