who make the adjustable rear beams?thinking of ordering 1 soon.does ag motorsport make them?hes not too far away from me.also are the cheap front compression struts any good?

 

Compbrake compression struts are Ł150 and are perfect, got them on my Escos. Got a Danny B rear beam (Adrenaline race and performance) that is camber and toe adjustable and is perfect as well, was Ł950...

 

what exactly do compression struts do guys
cheers james

 

they do away with the front anti roll bar and are adjustable.

 

i take it then lee they sharpen up the handling.
cheers james

 

A camber toe adjstable rear beam, sorry arms can be made for a heap less than Ł500 let alone closer to Ł1K.
tabetha

 

There not just camber and toe standard arms though, the pivot points have been change to improve geometry change, yes a standard arm just converted to be adjustable would be less than Ł500 but these are not.. I you know something I dont and can do these for half the cost please say and I will just stop making them and sell yours. If you count your time as free then they can be make cheap but my time and knowledge isn't free but all my customers are happy with there products.. IF NOT I have resolved at my own cost.

I'm sure Ahmed has a similar outlook as his beams arn't a few hundred pounds either.

 

how to make the rear beam adjustable? I am thinking to make both arm bolts excentric and this way to adjust camber and toe. please give advice

 

danny whats your view on changing your anti roll bar for compression struts on a road car?? have heard mixed views on it?? gotta 3dr if that makes any odds??

 

no idea?

 

I got my rear beam from harvey gibbs spot on bit of kit not cheap but when you look at a standard rear beam to the adj beam there is a hell of a lot of work to the arms and the beam so it show in the price !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I must admit, Danny is right. There is a good days work in making a beam. You have a lot of work to do to the pickups, extending the arms and making it all line up etc..
Then you have spacers, rosejoints, powdercoat....all costs money mate.

I think the current market price for 6 degree beams is bang on the money tbh...thats why nobody is undercutting anyone as theres not enough money in it to do that.

Cheers
Dan

 

im going to buy 1 in the new year when i get back from my trip away with work.i have my old rusty beam lying on my garage floor ready!

 

who can send me a lot of photos of the modified beams and rear arms to mst@splius.lt ? maybe have someone compared modified parts with original ones? please send me a PM or write an email. Thanks

 

In my experience CompBrake were actually very dissapointing :-(

 

What was wrong with them mate? I have their stuff fitted to two cars, and a few mates do with no complaints. Give them a ring and talk it through, sure they would be more than happy to help you out, been nothing but helpful when I have had small problems etc Sure they wouldn't want unhappy customers?

 

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!

 

Doughnutter > what you recommend as I understand you tested a lot of things. I also have 2wd sapphire and was thinking to order quite simmilar kit from compbrake. Thanks

 

The comp struts I had on before were from Rally Design. The TCA's i'm unsure were they came from, i'll check the Ral Des catalogue and see later, but they were far better engineered with the ajusters being in the middle so you could easily et a spanner to ajust them on a 2wd.. The Rall Des comp struts are hollow tube where as the CompBrake ones are CNC'd bar. TBH the CompBrake ones are probably a bit stronger, its just that with the fitting problems and incorrect fasteners , along with the fact we couldn't get a safe set up using a 4x4 cross member we felt that they didn't warrent the extra cost over the Ral Des ones. In fairness the Rall Des ones although made from tube performed great. I only managed to bend one in a drift accident involving a 9 inch curb lol It only bent the strut slightly, but it did snap the Ajs TCA in half.

 

Fair enough mate, sounds like you were more than fair. I have only fitted them to 4x4 cars, so have not had the trouble you have had.