FreakyParts brake kit problems

[Jake Wisdom]

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:

 

[Deleted member 27622]

That's good info to know!

I was considering getting the basic midlite kit for my EK9 from FreakyParts but after reading all that it really doesn't instill confidence that there will be much, if any support if I start having problems

You never know, poor customer service may have just lost him 2 customers!!

 

[jesse888]

Make that 3...
Wasn't planning on upgrading anytime soon(if ever) but I was aiming at the kit you have Jake lol

 

[Jake Wisdom]

I'm hoping the new discs will hold up. My friend has the same kit and also received the same poor level of customer service from Stewart. He has a 400 bhp DC2 and recently did a trip to the ring on the heavy duty discs and they were fine. I'm glad it's not just me who thinks the customer service is poor. Stewart is deluded and very ignorant as he wouldn't admit that he made a mistake on the disc selection. If he had just agreed he made a mistake and met me halfway on the costs then it wouldn't have come to this.

 

[jesse888]

I can see where he may be coming from not wanting to pay for your upgrade discs BUTTTT the way you should conduct yourself as a trader is paramount IMO.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean give the customer what they want all the time.
End of the day of your selling a brake kit suggesting they are up to heavy track use then they should be....
Atleast your thread has saved me and probably countless other none posters from cracking discs with this kit.

 

[Deleted member 27622]

you're totally right... im sure the kits he makes are of a good quality - obviously got no reason to doubt Wilwood, they've been around for years and as it says on his website 'have been proven in all aspects of motorsport to perform flawlessly' but as you say when it comes to selecting discs and pads to work with them you'd expect to get the right advice from someone who claims to be an expert!

Still...you don't stay in business long acting like a c u n t in a closed group of enthusiasts lol

 

[Jake Wisdom]

Wilwood make good kit. The calipers are very good and I love the feel and pedal modulation they give with the RC6 pads. I think the Ultralite discs are essentially designed for fast road. I don't think Stewart even knew about the uprated heavy duty discs until I mentioned them. He was happy to sell me another set of Ultralites which would have just fallen apart again. It was only when I started investigating on Wilwoods website that I found out about the HD discs. I then told Stewart they were the discs I wanted and clearly needed.

 

[jesse888]

Perhaps he's made an honest mistake with his disc selection then? Hopefully he'll have a chance to come on here and defend himself, perhaps offer the upgraded discs as an option to those that want to pay the extra for them...
Obviously doesn't excuse the poor service etc but every side has its story doesn't it...

 

[Jake Wisdom]

I do believe he did make a mistake. That's not a massive issue in my eyes. It's the fact that he wouldn't admit to it even when presented with Wilwoods own data that really pissed me off.

 

[jesse888]

I'm no legal expert but perhaps admitting to having sub standard discs(intentional or not) makes him liable in some way?

 

[Jake Wisdom]

You're probably right there. I do know that he is now offering the HD's where as he wasn't before. That is pretty much admitting the UL's aren't good enough.

 

[jesse888]

Oh so the kits are fixed now?

 

[Jake Wisdom]

Hopefully yes. It just annoys me that I had to be the guinea pig! I fitted the HD discs on the weekend and I've got 2 trackdays coming up so they will be put to the test.

 

[ted777]

I've used freaky quite a few times and have the wilwoods too with no complaints.
I've tried several types of discs and pretty much all of them have shuddered after a few races.
I'd say quite a few of his kits have been sold to show ponys who will never test them so mabby he didn't know they were not up to the job..

They way I see things like that is tough cookie learn from it buy the better discs and hopefully no more bother

 

[Jake Wisdom]

Which pads do you use Ted?

 

[JohnTurbo]

Cracks like that arent uncommon. I had dba5000 disks on my skyline that crazed like broken glass after some road use.
- And my friend had this issue with some crazy expensive jdm race disks on his TimeAttack mazda. Wgt suggested that for heavy track work disks should be regularly skimmed - and he had not supplied the cracked ones.

400bhp is a lot to shed through 310mm disks. You may have more issues yet.
It does sound like customer service could have been better.

 

[ted777]

Ds3000.

 

[Jake Wisdom]

Cracks like that arent uncommon. I had dba5000 disks on my skyline that crazed like broken glass after some road use.

- And my friend had this issue with some crazy expensive jdm race disks on his TimeAttack mazda. Wgt suggested that for heavy track work disks should be regularly skimmed - and he had not supplied the cracked ones.


400bhp is a lot to shed through 310mm disks. You may have more issues yet.

It does sound like customer service could have been better.

It wasn't just the cracks. They were warping that much when hot that they were rubbing the mounting brackets that are around 2-3mm away from the disc! The shaking through the steering column was horrendous.

Ds3000.

It's probably pad deposits giving you judder. DS2500/3000 are notorious for it.

 

[Jake Wisdom]

Here are the mounting brackets. You can see where the discs have been rubbing against them when warping with the heat but Stewart still wouldn't admit that the discs weren't man enough even after sending him these pictures.

 

[FreakyParts]

Ok. I've seen the posts on here, on Facebook and on itr-dc2.com and feel it's time I made a comment on this situation.
While I am not going to get into the whole discussion with the customer again, we've discussed this at length. I try to do my best to keep customers happy, inevitably there will be one where no matter what, that customer won't be happy and you loose that trade. This is the way in any business and any trader will agree.

To clear up a couple of points noted above, over the past 5 years, we have sold over 50 kits using these Superlite calipers matched with the Ultralite rotors. Not a single customer has come back to us saying they've had problems with the rotors warping/cracking or generally not being up to the job.
We design all our kits with input from both the UK distributor and from the manufacturers along with previous customer feedback. The first kit we sold was to an DC2 owner on here who reported positive feedback straight away, and after a few months all was still good.
I think the second kit was to an EK9 owner on here and again, all positive.
We then continued to sell these kits to owners from other marques including big power Evos, Celicas, other Type Rs and other manufacturers. None of the 50+ came back to us at any time in the 5 years to report any issue.

The rotors we have been supplying in these kits are the Wilwood UL32. (Not sure what type the details in the specs above refer to but it's different to the ones we use).
The part numbers are 160-2898/9 for the 298x32 and 160-2984/5 for the 309x32mm. http://wilwood.com/Rotors/RotorProd.aspx?itemno=160-2895

According to Wilwood's technical data they are suitable for Medium Duty Rally and Road Race

So the insistence for me to admit they're not suitable for the kit is difficult to understand, based on previous customer feedback and Wilwood's own information.

It is also impossible to test every compound of pad with every brake setup. We have tried and tested it with most but again will base recommendations on what we have experienced first hand or through positive feedback from customers.

With regards to the short life of these discs, it may be something as straight forward as a bad batch of rotors but having discussed this with the manufacturers they wouldn't admit this (fair enough) so wouldn't honour a warranty claim, but one thing Wilwood did say is with any brake setup as soon as you start using harder compound pads, you move the component which wears out from being the pad to the disc. The simple physics of brakes means something has to wear.

The main crux of the complaint was the customer wasn't happy with my apparent lack of interest in fixing the problem and the new rotors the customer wanted to use had a slightly different bolt fixing than the original ones.
However what wasn't mentioned was the torrent of abuse, foul language and name calling during several telephone conversations way past the point where any other sensible supplier would have told the customer to go elsewhere and put the phone down.

I didn't.

I listened to the complaint and offered a few options. The bells either needed remaking or modifying to fit this new bolt pattern. I agreed to have this sorted for less than it cost me to have them modified and would also supply a pair of the new rotors at below what they cost me.

I also arranged for the brackets to be cleaned up free of charge. I also supplied replacement rotors to the other customer who experienced issues at below cost price.

Now I understand the customer is still bereaved and trying his best to damage my reputation in whatever way he can. I hope this response goes some way to restoring the previous reputation. It can't have been that bad in the first place for the customer to have purchased brackets from ourselves in the past to sort an issue out with a brake kit he purchased from another source before deciding to upgrade to a larger disc setup.

Going forward, and because I take all customer feedback on board (be it positive or negative) I now offer the HD rotors as an optional upgrade for all 2 piece setups to ensure this sort of situation doesn't happen again.

Thanks.
Stewart
FreakyParts