Why Kazama Auto Lower Control Arms Make Sense for Your Drift Car
If you’ve spent any amount of time building an S-Chassis for drifting, you’ll know there’s no shortage of ways to modify the front end.
It doesn’t get the same attention as a high-angle knuckle or high-clearance caster arms, but the lower control arm has a big effect on the front end. Changing its length affects your track width, wheel position and suspension geometry, which becomes especially important once you’re chasing more steering angle.
Why Extend the Lower Control Arms?
For drift setups, the most obvious reason to run an extended lower control arm is to push the front wheels further out. This can give you more room to work with when it comes to wheel clearance, added camber and modifies your scrub radius. It can also be useful when you’re running a high-angle knuckle and want to make the most of the steering you’re adding.
Changing the length of the lower arm changes the geometry of the front suspension. When it’s paired with the right knuckle and steering components, it can help create a front end that feels more predictable when you’re at big steering angles.
The Usual Alternative: Cut and Shut
If you’ve been around S-Chassis for a while, you’ve probably seen the usual solution.
Take an OEM lower control arm, cut it, add some length, weld it back together and you’re good to go. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this. A properly fabricated arm can work perfectly well.
The thing is, once you look at everything involved, it isn’t necessarily the cheap option people assume it is.
If you’re reusing your OEM lower control arms, chances are they’re still running the original factory bushings and ball joints. They’re over 25 years old at this point, so there’s a good chance they’re already worn out.
Now you’re looking at replacing the ball joints and bushings, on top of the cost of time and labour having the arms cut, extended, welded and painted (if you're fancy).
Introducing the Kazama Auto Lower control Arms
Kazama Auto arms are about as good as it gets for an S-Chassis.
They retain the stock OEM-style design for good street driveability, while still using hardened rubber bushings to avoid the harshness and increased NVH you can get with typical aftermarket pillow-ball LCAs while still being an upgrade over OEM.
The lower control arms are manufactured from scratch as a stamped component. They use 2.8mm to 3.0mm than the factory arm and a dedicated press-forming process, resulting in a reinforced arm that’s designed around the additional strength from the start.
So when you put the two options side by side, the price difference can be a lot smaller than you might expect, especially when you factor in everything you need to modify an OEM setup.
Choosing the Right Length
Kazama Auto offers different lengths, including standard, +25 mm and +35 mm options.
Your wheel width, offset, tyre size, knuckle, alignment and the rest of your suspension setup all come into play.
A good rule of thumb is that the standard length or +25 mm arms will work for most cut and shut knuckle set ups, while the +35 mm arms are better suited to more extreme competition setups, such as those running the B Knuckle V3.
Conclusion![]()
If you already have a good set of OEM arms sitting around and you’ve got a trusted fabricator who can extend them properly, the cut-and-shut route can still be a perfectly reasonable option.
But with even S15s now approaching the 30-year mark, it’s worth doing the maths. Once you add up the cost of OEM arms, ball joints, bushings and fabrication, you’re probably not as far away from a clean and proper Kazama Auto setup as you might think.
Visit the following links to shop for Kazama Auto Lower Control Arms:
Kazama Auto Standard Length Lower Control Arms for S14/S15