[JLMounce]

I had the summit branded global west copies on my wife's Chevelle and the arms themselves were fine. The finish was good, they were the proper size and orientation, welds were good. The ball joints were lousy and the delrin bushings were loose in the housings. From a performance standpoint the bushings were fine, they were just noisy as a result of the tolerances.

As ZeGermanHam mentions, the problem is that a lot of these components out there that are lower cost are built with sub-par parts that don't last. Most people building these cars may put a 1000 miles on the car a year, so the parts are well past the warranty. It's cheaper for the manufacturer to deal with the few claims that come in then to provide the product with quality parts.

There's a reason that quality "entry level" arms like BMR are still a good bit more expensive than the knock-offs. Even then, you're still getting a lot of polyurethane, which isn't the best choice for suspension components. You want high durometer rubber or delrin. If you look at the delrin bushings found in the knock-offs compared to arms like Global West, SPC, DSE etc. you'll notice that there's about 3X the amount of delrin in the higher priced arms. It's my opinion that it is largely the subpar delrin bushings found in the knockoffs that have caused the internet to claim that they are noisy and harsh. You're more or less riding on a steel cartridge with about a 1/4" of nylon as a cushion with those things.