Jake Wisdom
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2015
- Messages
- 10
I am writing this post to share the problems I have had with the FreakyParts brake kit and the poor customer service I received from FreakyParts.
FreakyParts is run by a guy called Stewart. He only lives 10 miles away from me and I have been using him for a few years now. Stewart works in IT so he uses an engineer to machine up the custom parts for his kits. To be fair the quality of the machining is pretty good.
My DC2 is 340 BHP and it was destroying brakes so I needed a decent set of front brakes. I bought the 310mm Superlite kit last year. On his website it says, and I quote "The kit has been tried and tested on several different types of car both on the road and track and has performed flawlessly" I fitted the kit along with some Carbone Lorraine RC6 pads.
I used the brakes for fast road to start with and almost straight away I noticed some judder from the brakes when they were getting hot. I thought it could possibly be something to do with the pads leaving deposits but as RC6 are sintered I did find it a bit strange. I thought maybe they would clear in time after they had bedded in a bit more.
The problem didn't go away and after only around 1500 miles of fast road driving I noticed some cracks starting to appear. I had to go and pick up some wheel spacers from Stewart and I pointed this out to him but he didn't really say much. I then did a trackday at Castle Combe. The brakes were terrible. After a short time on track the brake judder was horrendous. When they cooled down the judder would go but then just come back when they got hot again.
I spoke to Stewart and he advised some new discs. I then started doing some research on the Wilwood website. The discs Stewart sells with his kits are called Ultralites. Wilwood themselves only rate the Ultralites as "light duty" for "road race" and "rally". Wilwood also do a disc called HD (Heavy duty). These discs are rated heavy duty for road race, rally and also Nascar and all sorts of different race series in the USA.
Ultralite disc rating from the Wilwood website:
Heavy duty disc rating from the Wilwood website:
Disc comparison (Ultralite on the left Heavy duty on the right)
I suggested to Stewart that he'd messed up in with the disc selection. He wasn't having any of it but I suggested that we split the cost of the new uprated discs 50/50 which I thought was fair. He was also not interested in entertaining this. I then discovered the bells needed modifying to accept the heavy duty discs. He agreed to give me a very small discount on the discs (2-3%) but I had to pay for the cost of the modifications.
My original quote for the new discs and modifications was £320 bear in mind I had already spent £875 on the kit 6 months previously. If Stewart had speced the heavy duty discs from the start it would have only been an extra £72 on top of the £875. I pointed this out to him but he just wasn't interested in moving on pricing.
A friend is also running the same kit but in 300mm on his high power DC2. I told my friend about my problems and he checked his discs. They were also cracked! My friend emailed Stewart and told him of the problems but he didn't offer my friend much discount either. After my friend informed Stewart of his problems I contacted Stewart again demanding he sort out the problem for a lower price now that someone else had the same problem. He reduced the price to £282. I still wasn't happy with this.
Stewart is just full of excuses and reasons and will never admit that he made a mistake. He kept blaming the pads but he knew I was running RC6 when I bought the kit. I ended up getting really pissed off with him and rang him up. He said, and I quote "It doesn't really matter if I annoy you Jake I might lose one customer" That made my blood boil! What kind of attitude is that?! Bear in mind I was always singing his praises and recommending him to people on here.
I ended up paying the £282 to get the bells modified and for the new discs but I obviously wasn't very happy about it! If anybody has the FreakyParts kit I recommend you check your discs. If you do need new discs just go direct to http://www.rallydesign.co.uk. They're cheaper than Stewart. That's where Stewart gets the discs from anyway and just sells them onto you with mark up.
Cracks in discs:
FreakyParts is run by a guy called Stewart. He only lives 10 miles away from me and I have been using him for a few years now. Stewart works in IT so he uses an engineer to machine up the custom parts for his kits. To be fair the quality of the machining is pretty good.
My DC2 is 340 BHP and it was destroying brakes so I needed a decent set of front brakes. I bought the 310mm Superlite kit last year. On his website it says, and I quote "The kit has been tried and tested on several different types of car both on the road and track and has performed flawlessly" I fitted the kit along with some Carbone Lorraine RC6 pads.
I used the brakes for fast road to start with and almost straight away I noticed some judder from the brakes when they were getting hot. I thought it could possibly be something to do with the pads leaving deposits but as RC6 are sintered I did find it a bit strange. I thought maybe they would clear in time after they had bedded in a bit more.
The problem didn't go away and after only around 1500 miles of fast road driving I noticed some cracks starting to appear. I had to go and pick up some wheel spacers from Stewart and I pointed this out to him but he didn't really say much. I then did a trackday at Castle Combe. The brakes were terrible. After a short time on track the brake judder was horrendous. When they cooled down the judder would go but then just come back when they got hot again.
I spoke to Stewart and he advised some new discs. I then started doing some research on the Wilwood website. The discs Stewart sells with his kits are called Ultralites. Wilwood themselves only rate the Ultralites as "light duty" for "road race" and "rally". Wilwood also do a disc called HD (Heavy duty). These discs are rated heavy duty for road race, rally and also Nascar and all sorts of different race series in the USA.
Ultralite disc rating from the Wilwood website:
Heavy duty disc rating from the Wilwood website:
Disc comparison (Ultralite on the left Heavy duty on the right)
I suggested to Stewart that he'd messed up in with the disc selection. He wasn't having any of it but I suggested that we split the cost of the new uprated discs 50/50 which I thought was fair. He was also not interested in entertaining this. I then discovered the bells needed modifying to accept the heavy duty discs. He agreed to give me a very small discount on the discs (2-3%) but I had to pay for the cost of the modifications.
My original quote for the new discs and modifications was £320 bear in mind I had already spent £875 on the kit 6 months previously. If Stewart had speced the heavy duty discs from the start it would have only been an extra £72 on top of the £875. I pointed this out to him but he just wasn't interested in moving on pricing.
A friend is also running the same kit but in 300mm on his high power DC2. I told my friend about my problems and he checked his discs. They were also cracked! My friend emailed Stewart and told him of the problems but he didn't offer my friend much discount either. After my friend informed Stewart of his problems I contacted Stewart again demanding he sort out the problem for a lower price now that someone else had the same problem. He reduced the price to £282. I still wasn't happy with this.
Stewart is just full of excuses and reasons and will never admit that he made a mistake. He kept blaming the pads but he knew I was running RC6 when I bought the kit. I ended up getting really pissed off with him and rang him up. He said, and I quote "It doesn't really matter if I annoy you Jake I might lose one customer" That made my blood boil! What kind of attitude is that?! Bear in mind I was always singing his praises and recommending him to people on here.
I ended up paying the £282 to get the bells modified and for the new discs but I obviously wasn't very happy about it! If anybody has the FreakyParts kit I recommend you check your discs. If you do need new discs just go direct to http://www.rallydesign.co.uk. They're cheaper than Stewart. That's where Stewart gets the discs from anyway and just sells them onto you with mark up.
Cracks in discs: