I ordered a set of Comp struts, ajst TCA's and rose joints for the steering off them and they supplied m with some free top eccentric mounts. I was going to replace the damaged stuff on my BDC car and then put some of their stickers on and let them use some pics of the car for their website.

The first problem we had was that the fittings for the compression struts to TCA's werent a snug fit in in the joint. I had to use the end fixing for the comp strut off the old one as it was a better fit. The TCA's cannot be easily ajusted due to the ajusters being at the crossmember end and being obscured by the cross member on the 2wd. Also the fastenings supplied with the compression struts were not long enough to go through the holes and into the nylock bolts enough to actually engage threads into the nyloc. We put a 4x4 crossmember in to see how that would work. We got the ajustability issuse sorted with the new crossmember giving clearance, but with the mounts for the TCS's being futher forward, we could not get the castor set properly and still have what we considered a safe amount of thread left in the comp strut ajusters. Added to this if you were to put the rose joints they supplies for the steering onto the rack, ajusted in as much as humanly possible you still have approx 15 degs of toe out.

I was at the Autosport show on Thursday (the day after we tried to fit them) with the University. I approached the guys on the stand. I tried to explain the problems with the TCA's first. He said "do you know how many of these i've sold? its in 4 figures". I said it doesn't matter how many you sold, fact is you cant get a spanner on the ajuster nuts on the 2wd. He told me that he'd never heard of a problem before, his mate had them on for years. He called his mate over who then when asked admitted he'd never ajusted them as he couldn't get a spanner on the locknuts. PMSL. His initial reply was bring them to me and i'll ajust them for you, then asked why I didn't just grind a spanner down till it fits. Then he deceided to offer to send me 2 smaller lock nuts for the arms. I pointed out that rather than have to grind a spanner down maybe the better soloution would be to engineer them like the ones i'd taken off with the ajusters in the middle. This was met with more crap about how many he'd sold and no one had ever complained before. He said the gap in the TCA's was there as people like to seal the gap with rubber?? OK maybe some people do it that way, never seen it myself but possible, but I wanted a tight fit like every other set up i've done using these on Sierra's. Then I pointed out that the fastenings weren't long enough. He didn't beleive me untill I took a comp strut off the display stand and showed him. The fasteners at the rear of the arm were cleary bout 20mm too short and would not go into the nylock nuts enough. He gave me a load of crap about how his suppliers must off sent out the wrong bolts in a box marked with the correct size. So they didn't think when they assembled them they were wrong then? I don't know whats worse, the thought of people assembling motorsport parts and not thinking about what they are doing or blaming your simple mistakes on a supplier. By this point he was clearly uninterested in anything i had to say and was more interested in talking to his customers. So by this point I couldn't be arsed to mention the fact that the closest I could get to a tracked up front end was 15 deg toe out with his rose joint kit. I just bit my tongue and walked away. I explained what had happened to my Uni tutor. A few of us had a lugh about how shocking the whole thing was. He said I may of pissed the guy off telling him what I did but in fairness he got on the phone to the warehouse and asked them to start checking all the fastenings in stock, so it could potentially save someone from fitting something dangerously or being dissapointed.

So I say, badly engineered design for 2wd application. Sub standard assembly / quality controll. Cold customer service skills. As for the rose joint kit, thats just a laugh.

I feel a little disapointed with the whole incident. I was very grateful that he helped us with the free top mounts and looked forward to buiding a relationship with the company as we developed the car, but after my experience with them I won't be ordering anymore suspension parts from them.

Oh and the 400 quids worth of bits was dumped on my doorstep. Not CompBrakes fault but if it had of been nicked i'd of been in trouble. Many companies eg Deemon Tweaks / Rally Des insist their couriers obtain a signiture, they have never dumped expensive stuff on my doorstep before.

Rant over!