OK, so here goes, I was going to email JamSport but I might aswell update my thread just as I would do anyway.
Not happy at all after today, infact, completely shocked, appauled and annoyed.
A couple of things I kept quiet about within the past week because I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but on the day of having my geometry setup, the YTS lad stripped the thread on my wheel stud by putting on the wheel bolts with an airgun without winding them up on a couple of threads first. But Jamie (the boss) assured me that they'd removed the wheel nut from the stud, applied lock tight put the stud back in, and it was fine.
Well, today - I changed my brake pads as you've seen above to find that removing my wheel nuts, with my stud still attached to it - and no threadlock on the section that went into the hub... great... spent the best part of an hour removing it and cleaning up the threads.
Something else, which I wasn't too bothered about but now everything else has been uncovered, it seems like the way it is. When Matty (YTS lad) was using an angle grinder to grind down the back of the knuckle on the hub, he sliced through my CV boot, and admitted it and said he'd already told Jamie (the boss) but nothing was mentioned and it wasn't replaced. Great... CV boot grease everywhere, and now needs replacing
OK - so thats what I already knew about, I wasn't happy but hey... I kept quiet...
Today, I got my car out today first time since my drive back from JamSport, and changed my brake pads and found the above.
Then Matt (m17tty) turned up and we headed over to Oli's (dhdev) house as he wanted to use my laptop, on the way over I was telling Matt that it still felt very loose, after travelling 22miles to Oli's we noticed that I could turn the steering wheel a quarter of a turn, but the wheels were not turning.
Very strange we thought, so let Oli have a drive and he pulled over immediately and refused to drive the car any further, so I jumped in.
First of all we thought it was the snap-off boss moving, nope solid, then we thought it was the splines of the steering wheel column skipping teeth - but everything looked fine.
Then we even doubted the fitting of the quikrack, and the tensionor, maybe I hadn't preloaded it and it was skipping teeth - but for how big the teeth were on the pinion and rack - this would have been impossible.
So, I asked Matt to hold the passenger wheel still, and Oli to hold the drivers wheel still, whilst I tryed to turn the steering wheel - to much of our amazment, the camber was changing on the wheels in their hands, allowing the steering wheel to move, but the wheels weren't. The bolts were loose!
We immediately whipped the wheel off to find the 2x 19mm bolts holding the strut to the hub carrier were loose, in fact, Oli set his torque wrench on the lowest setting of 40nm, and it didn't even click it just turned and tightened them up so it was less than 40nm!!! it turned the bolts, shocking. These in the Haynes Manual should have been 120nm+!
Then as you do - you go on to investigate other bits and bobs, to find that the elongated holes on the bottom ball joints, these were also finger tight, not tight at all... bottom ball joints... does this explain it feeling loose whilst driving?
Looking around, where the bolts pass through the rosejoints on the front panel, one of the bolts have a washer under the nut, and the other doesn't... despite this looking insignificant, it's not, it is significant as its again a lack of quality checks
Whilst the passenger wheel was off - Matt (m17tty) noticed the massive chunks out of the inside of my Toyo 888 where it had been randomly hitting the inside of my passenger wing where the wheel had been moving erratically due to not being bolted up correctly - so a new tyre is now needed as I've had to checked and they've wrote a nigh brand new 888 off.
What annoys me is I expressed this concern to Mark Broster at JamSport that this YTS lad only tightened these bolts with a 6" ratchet, and even 16stone of me still uses a foot long scaffold bar to make sure they're FT.
It just shocks me, not that it should matter, but this is a trackday / sprint car that is driven on the roads aswell - so when it is driven, its not driven slowly, or softly.
It just really shocks me that they've let this car out of their workshop with these bolts not tight enough, not torqued up.
Myself and JamSport need to have talks, beacuse now I have my Sprint tomorrow, and what I paid for only 5 days ago has gone out the window, and we're back to "by eye". And a Toyo R888 wheel which is foooked.
I now have to pay another company to get all my geometry rechecked, and re-set up.
I am just sooooo thankful that Oli needed my help today, and I took the drive over to find this out, it doesn't bare thinking about what would have happened tomorrow at the sprint with all of these components loose.
Oli & Matt are the ones that diagnosed these loose bolts which makes me glad that some other people were there to back up these findings.
I have now tightened up all the relevant bolts and the car does feel very tight, and very positive - altho my geometry is yet again - out the window, as now the camber isn't bang on identical both sides and now it pulls to the passenger side.
JamSport have my number, so they can give me a call alternatively I'll be calling them first thing Monday morning to sort this out one way or another.
I definately want a refund for what effectively has been a sham.
Very disappointed, and I really didn't want to be posting this up - its not a lynching, it is true to life facts of what has happened today, and the findings.
I hope everyone understands why I've posted this up - as I would be feeling very guilty if people went to JamSport off the back off raging positive review, when in fact they would be let down exactly the same as I have.
