Thinking about buying one of the 8 pot D2 brake kits, I know they are very cheap compared to other kits but are they worth buying?
GB
http://www.fduk.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16245
Neil
Thanks for the reply, for some reason I can not register on that site due to the spam filter??
What price are the kits in the group buy?
There K-sport but here is relevant details
Prices as follows:
Front - 8 pot caliper kit
330 x 32 - RRP £999 + VAT - GB inc vat & Delivery - £699.00
356 x 32 - RRP £1,249 + VAT - GB inc vat & Delivery - £849.00
Can also get the 6 pot and 12 pot if required please pm me.
Rear -
6 pot caliper kit
336 x 32 - RRP £999 + VAT - GB inc vat & Delivery - £699.00
356 x 32 - RRP £1,249 + VAT - GB inc vat & Delivery - £849.00
8 pot caliper kit
388 x 32 - RRP £1,999 + VAT - GB inc vat & Delivery - £1,399.00
Thanks Lee, I was planning on buying the 330 x 32 8 pot kit this weekend for £899!
I would be interested in buying the 330 x 32 kit, can anyone offer help regarding registering, I have already pm\'s moderators but had no reply.
Thanks for your help.
Having stripped a set of these, I personally would avoid. They are cheap for a reason. The piston design isnt great, and the one we refurbed was heavily scorred.
There really isnt any need to go for more pistons....look at the combined surface area they exert rather than the number.
Quote from: AtomicRex;654330Having stripped a set of these, I personally would avoid. They are cheap for a reason. The piston design isnt great, and the one we refurbed was heavily scorred.
There really isnt any need to go for more pistons....look at the combined surface area they exert rather than the number.
At last, someone who agrees with me :D
They are shockingly made.....if you are after a cheap big brake kit, look at the Stoptech stuff.....not quite the price of AP etc, but not badly made (basically they are brembo replica\'s).
Thanks for the replies, thought they would get a negative response, after all you get what you pay for!
Ill have a look at other kits.
Quote from: Dan Norton;654340At last, someone who agrees with me :D
They are shockingly made.....if you are after a cheap big brake kit, look at the Stoptech stuff.....not quite the price of AP etc, but not badly made (basically they are brembo replica\'s).
surely they would have to be tested and pass to bet a BS number. if they are that bad surely they would fail
Quote from: AtomicRex;654330Having stripped a set of these, I personally would avoid. They are cheap for a reason. The piston design isnt great, and the one we refurbed was heavily scorred.
There really isnt any need to go for more pistons....look at the combined surface area they exert rather than the number.
no disrespect but from outside.. it looks like a dig to advertise your own as you`ve just started a group buy of your brake kits also..
have you any further info to back this up...
Quote from: skybusr34;654346no disrespect but from outside.. it looks like a dig to advertise your own as you`ve just started a group buy of your brake kits also..
have you any further info to back this up...
Which is why
a) I hesitated on replying.. and
b) I didn’t say...they are crap, so buy mine :)
I am happy to take photos of the pistons and show the problems...so that it doesn’t appear as though I am bitching.
It is difficult to give impartial opinions when selling items.....and the reason for the post on the group buy is to offer an alternative to the replacement rear callipers that actually have a fully working handbrake that is MOT compliant, and doesn’t need spot callipers making up.
Quote from: AtomicRex;654349Which is why
a) I hesitated on replying.. and
b) I didn’t say...they are crap, so buy mine :)
I am happy to take photos of the pistons and show the problems...so that it doesn’t appear as though I am bitching.
It is difficult to give impartial opinions when selling items.....and the reason for the post on the group buy is to offer an alternative to the replacement rear callipers that actually have a fully working handbrake that is MOT compliant, and doesn’t need spot callipers making up.
thanks . i do appreciate whats being said as im now unsure what to buy now
I have the greddy 6 pot front brake kit and they are superb.Not the cheapest on the market but with brakes i dont think you should be taking any chances.
That said plenty of people use K sport and d2 brakes with no problems.
from what i`ve just read, they DID have problems with older caliper kits because they were designed for track use, they didnt have dust seals or something and needed regular maintainance, the scoring happened from lack of servicing.
this problem has been solved
I also don\'t understand the cheap crap comment when the rrp of those brakes and the atomic rex ones are exactly the same ?
I\'ve gone for a set of 356x32 8 pots in the group buy because other people are using them and seem happy. If they where so bad why would a very respected tuner let one of his key clients use them ?
Shaun
The RRP isnt exactly the same....and if notice K-Sport are willing to do loads of group buys. They are offering massive discounts over the RRP 40% +, which has splatterings of cheapening the brand. Dont get me wrong, I participate in Group buys but this allows me to pass on the savings, and so the discounts are around 10-15%
The majority of the copy brakes are exactly that. They are all copies of the original AP calipers. The reason I went with HiSpec is because they have a good reputation, and on stripping one, it is well put together and is built to stand the rigors of road and race. I was originally running KADs and they were great out on track, lasted me 2 seasons, and then TonyC on a further season. However only HiSpec had invested into building a rear caliper that had an internal handbrake, and it works!!
I didnt say they were "cheap crap" I did say they were cheap and the evidence was simple, we stipped a set of 8 pots for a Nissan Skyline. They are only a year old, and have been used for track work, and they are in awful condition.
Lol, some group buy that is... \'click click\' (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350276618984).....
Sorry with the cheap crap comment. I get very annoyed when people use the dyson technique of sales. Slag off everything else and say nothing about their own product. I understand this isn\'t what jon is saying :2Rolleyes
I was seriously interested in your rear setup with the new kit because of the handbrake system although k-sport had had issues with a similar system and removed it.
What makes the AP kit so much better ? (coming from the design engineer in me)
Shaun
Quote from: TRex;654363Lol, some group buy that is... \'click click\' (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350276618984).....
That is the start of the auction price. Be interesting to see what they go for at end of auction.
Shaun
funny how a trader says someone elses products are bad lol, there are pleanty of reports of pretty much every brake kit out there that have had bad faults...
k sport and d2 are made in the same factory im pretty sure...
if you can afford it grex etc are goooood kits all made by alcon which are better than brembo and ap by all accounts.
oh and im sure someone on here bought the atomicrex or hispec kit and the rear handbrake mech needed alot of work to make it work...
Quote from: MaLicE;654374oh and im sure someone on here bought the atomicrex or hispec kit and the rear handbrake mech needed alot of work to make it work...
do you have a link to that? i was thinking about a set of these on mine, but I would like to know what I would be getting myself into if it needs fabbing.
Actually I think I have found it, did you mean the post near the bottom of this thread (http://www.mazdarotaryclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52304)? Or is there another one?
http://www.mazdarotaryclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44557&highlight=burnout&page=22
I have done some more reading on a few forums, going to give them a miss and buy a better quailty kit.
Quote from: Colin;654396I have done some more reading on a few forums, going to give them a miss and buy a better quailty kit.
put up links dude. im just about to send money . interesrted in negative feed back
Tough one for me to get involved in as I am in the trade "however" having been around for a long time, and with my Clive hat on I felt I should at least tell you that the brake kit question is a real barrel of worms!!
First up to answer the initial D2 question,
We have had numerous mails from this Chinese company as did others for a few months asking if we would be a distributor but declined, eventually Apex picked them up (good luck)
This was after company near us in Sittingbourne who did have them for a long time gave it up as the warranty claims nearly killed them off!
K-SPORT shock absorbers and 4/6/8/10 POT brake system kits are made in Taiwan,
Now I don\'t know much about K-Sport but a quick search shows it\'s not a very favored brand but then "you get what you pay for"
I can tell you though that we “were” the U/K distributor for a Taiwan company called Winner power (marketed as HP Racing in the States) and sold quite a few kits to the Cosa boys with no problems however we dropped them like a brick after we had reports from elsewhere in the world that they were having a disc cracking problem,
Next up is Geoff Bedding of Hi Spec and all I can say is that I hope that the quality is there as it wasn\'t a few years back,
My ex business partner got real miffed when Hi Spec wanted us to be their fitting center and disagreed and declined as I realised we would become the first in line for unhappy customers as we had fitted the product, why ?
Because we knew that they had had Discs explode, indeed a guy with a beemer ended up in a lamp post!, also we used to look after Paz\'s "Fast Car" mag Scooby that came back to us a total of five times for leaking calipers etc on his ill fitting kit !, having said that many are very happy with their product these days at least on track.
Many of these “wonderful” big brake kits have very dubious looking Disc\'s, “material wise” and the billet calipers are very flimsy and lack correct dust seals to keep muck out, plus some don\'t even have stainless pistons meaning they will be prone to seizing on our salt laden roads,
My personal feeling is that if your racing these cheaper kits are worth a go , after all you should be in a car that has a full cage, full harness etc and should your brakes fail you should only end up in a barrier, trust me total brake failure isn’t nice,
I had this happen during practice for a race going down the back “straight” into the left hander at Lydden Hill and smacked the inside bank, however the road is different, especially in a quick FD and rather than a bank you could well take out other normal road users or pedestrians,
If you look at a Brembo caliper it is a very robust caliper using very thick castings unlike the easy to make machine em up out of billet made from a block of god knows what!
Lastly there\'s nothing personal in what I\'m about to say, and I hate to say it, but if you buy something this safety related on a group buy and god forbid something goes really horribly wrong, who would you sue for compensation ?
Even with a straight warranty claim where no harm was done you would need to go back to the "company" and not the manufacturer as you would not have brought the goods from the manufacturer ,
I know a lot won\'t like the above, but sorry I flinch when people talk about bolting potentially lethal things on our very quick motor cars, other cars maybe but then a Saxo isn\'t that quick is it.
As I say, "you get what you pay for" and yes I know its tough if you haven\'t got lots of money for the real stuff, but the saving grace here is that the FC and FD has not got a bad braking system as standard and with just pads and Discs it can be a whole lot better, Safely.
Quote from: skybusr34;654401put up links dude. im just about to send money . interesrted in negative feed back
I never actually found anything saying avoid etc but read loads of people saying the quailty was just not as good as other kits and that it was worth paying a bit extra.
I am thinking about buying hi-specs now, I have bought them before and was impressed with the quailty and they were a helpful company.
Our rear brake kits fit first time....and without any issues what so ever.
We have a kit on TonyC\'s car, as well as 3 kits on our own cars.
The standard handbrake has 3 cables, the first is attached between the handbrake lever and a three-way plate, and the other two are attached between the plate and the individual callipers. These are now changed and modified by ourselves to fit directly into the plate and attach to the new callipers.
There have been two slight problems with our rear calliper set up, and unfortunately with the first two kits. The first problem was with Jan-Tore, as his handbrake cables were the wrong size, this is why we now modify them in house. The second was with Vest Racing, where he took a non handbrake kit, but the person I had packing the kit mixed up the rotors, bells and brackets from the handbrake kit. This again has been rectified. It was just a shame that both kits were sent overseas.
But we learnt from the mistakes, and they now fit without any fault :)
The new handbrake cables that are supplied by HiSpec are modified by ourselves, and fit within the standard
Good comments Clive
And I have been bugged by the XYZ people trying to sell me their brake kits and coilovers.
The biggest problem with buying Far Eastern copy items is that you are going to be unsure of the aluminium content within their billet. Aluminium grades can vary by so much, and we have found a lot of the cheaper stuff is made from high tin contents or recycled aluminium. Try welding the stuff...its next to impossible!
Im not trying to bitch about all items that come from the far east.....but mainly the cheap stuff. This is why 95% of the items we use on our cars is made here in the UK.
It is also a very valid point about public liability insurance....we are insured up to £10milion pounds, as Im sure Clive and other specialists are. Not sure where you stand with a group buy though...so I can but echo Clive\'s worries.
With regards to HiSpecs issues...they did have a shaky start....but have overcome this, and the fact that Radical, Caterham, Westfield and of course us ;) use their callipers as standard items I think speaks volumes.
Quote from: shaunwil;654370That is the start of the auction price. Be interesting to see what they go for at end of auction.
Shaun
It won\'t go actually, this is the 3rd time it\'s been relisted at the very same price!
Quote\'Clive\' -- but if you buy something this safety related on a group buy and god forbid something goes really horribly wrong, who would you sue for compensation ?
Even with a straight warranty claim where no harm was done you would need to go back to the "company" and not the manufacturer as you would not have brought the goods from the manufacturer ,
I think that says it all....
^ My early teens learing about Cars and fixing them etc, something I always remember my old man telling me,
\'Brakes and Steering\', never feck or cut corners with these 2 things, everything else maybe, but never Brakes and Steering!!!!!
I\'m with Clive on this. Being in the OEM manufacturing on daily basis, I can\'t agree more.
Asian companies flood the market with their cheap stuff, And I don\'t mind too much as long as they are offering cheap gauges, bodykits or whatever for that matter.
But when it comes to safety, the choice wether too live another day... I would NEVER mess with the brakes of my car
As anyone used the D2 gear on a quick track car on a FD????? Probably most havent but I have in my Time Attack car so I can answer it not like some on here who are slagging them off without using them properly.
The calipers and discs are great and the do the job as well as a set of 6 pot Ap Racing ones. The only thing you need to change is the pads and brake fluid to some decent stuff. I used Carbonne Lorraine pads and fluid and all i can is the brake set up is fantastic. There have been a few on here who have driven my car on the road and track and they have all commented on how good they are how quickly it stops with no juddering and more importantly straight.
If they were that rubbish as some of you are saying why are there many Time Attack cars, EDC and BDC using these brakes??
Cant be that crap
Thanks for that ash, out of interest have you had any problems with disc\'s cracking?
nothing at all, had the same set for last 18 months and are just as new
Quote from: AshRX;654598As anyone used the D2 gear on a quick track car on a FD????? Probably most havent but I have in my Time Attack car so I can answer it not like some on here who are slagging them off without using them properly.
The calipers and discs are great and the do the job as well as a set of 6 pot Ap Racing ones. The only thing you need to change is the pads and brake fluid to some decent stuff. I used Carbonne Lorraine pads and fluid and all i can is the brake set up is fantastic. There have been a few on here who have driven my car on the road and track and they have all commented on how good they are how quickly it stops with no juddering and more importantly straight.
If they were that rubbish as some of you are saying why are there many Time Attack cars, EDC and BDC using these brakes??
Cant be that crap
sponsorship, i know a few time attack people and edc/bdc and for using products and sticking stickers on the car they get cheap/free parts
when it comes to brakes i would want something i know isnt likely to fail, when i get around to uprating mine i will get some brembo calipers (even ones off of cars like 350z\'s etc and get a custom bracket made up) i think someone on rx7 club said the brembo\'s off of a certain evo fit straight on with a certain disk... or save and get some grex/project mu/alcon/ap i want to go for a big brand one cos im a badge whore and i know they work and i wont have to worry about dust seals or having to rebuild every 1-2 years.
Quote from: AshRX;654598If they were that rubbish as some of you are saying why are there many Time Attack cars, EDC and BDC using these brakes??
Cant be that crap
Hi Ash, pleased your brakes were fine
I had actualy said above/
"My personal feeling is that if your racing these cheaper kits are worth a go" My real reservations are road use,
Hopefully !, armed with my post above and this below people will be better informed to make their choice when it comes to parting with hard earned cash, not forgetting that these cheaper kits are still a lot of money !!,
If using these calipers on the road here in the U/K, personally I would look for//
Stainless Steel pistons, double seals, i.e. that there is a dust/muck seal as well as the fluid seal as many don’t have a dust seal, and lastly, have a good look at the caliper to check that it has enough meat everywhere because after prolonged use the caliper may warp causing the pistons to stick or worse if the metal is too thin it may fatigue and break.
Hope this helps
Right, here\'s where I become unpopular I guess.
I have never seen the logic in buying cheap brakes on either the road or the track.
On the road think wheel nuts. On a race car they are on and off non stop. On a road car they get torqued up and then taken for granted for two years until you need a new tyre. It\'s the same with brakes for me, when I\'m dozy and slow and listening to the radio pottering down the M4 in the rain I\'d like to know that they will work when I need when it\'s been so long since I saw them I couldn\'t tell you what make they were..
The trouble with cheap brake kits of any description is that the profit margins will be the same by and large, so you are left with lower materials cost to achieve it.
So what tends to go wrong with them?
Well, calipers bending is a good one I saw when a full race E36 M3 decided to forego the obligatory AP route and save himself a few quid. Of course when you\'re not leaning on them as hard the same happens, but imperceptibly slower..
Unfortunately (those of a sensitive nature avert your ears) just being on the grid with them in Time Attack is not necessarily an advertisement. There are those (hey, just like in full circuit racing) who aren\'t necessarily shall we say /leaning/ on the equipment as much as they might like to make out, and we don\'t know of the maintenance they are undergoing or indeed the track mileage or indeed any sponsorship deals and replacements. Putting them back to back with a set of top spec equipment after a full seasons running might be a more accurate test..
There are tuners and then there are professional motorsport teams (WSR, Team Dynamics etc), and it would be interesting to see if they are using anything surprising. Probably not but I\'ll tell you soon because I\'m writing a technical brakes feature for a magazine shortly.
All brakes should be able to stop you with no vibrations and pulling, what changes is their ability to do that over long periods and mileage and for given heat ranges.
After messing around with "fast road" brands in the past, it got to the stage where if you cut me down the middle I\'d have AP stamped through me like a stick of rock. However, I moved to Alcon due to a disc sizing issue and can report they are every bit as good for a similar price point. Effectively my race cars brakes are the same as Sebastian Loeb\'s WRC car.
However for a road car app I wouldn\'t do either of these. As has been mentioned I\'d just work out what other (faster) cars OEM set would fit my car, get the thing properly setup and off I go at less money and more likely less concern over its ability to handle road car mileages.
S.