Spares manufacturers+shops: Who are the Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

[John Clayton]

Following on from this topic:
Are BRITPART clutches decent quality?   http://www.mud-club.com/forum/index.php/topic,56749.0.html

I wondered what people reckon of the various manufacturers of spares out there.

What I want is good quality solid stuff and I'm prepared to pay for up to OEM-level parts but I don't know which makes or shops are best for this (and I don't want 'gold-plated' stuff)

I'm very new to this game, but I'll kick off with some of my own experience:

Scorpion: high quality but pricey

Frog's Island: high quality but stunningly pricey

Britpart: cheap and cheerful but a lot of question marks over their quality from the Land Rover community (not just as seen in the CLUTCH thread above)

[TDi90]

Scorpion: high quality but pricey

DONT BUY FROM. long story im sure if you search scorpion racing on any LR board there will be plenty of info!
i will never spend a penny with them.
R

[clbarclay]

What I want is good quality solid stuff and I'm prepared to pay for up to OEM-level parts but I don't know which makes or shops are best for this (and I don't want 'gold-plated' stuff)

Have you tried a land rover main dealer.


If your after OEM your probably best avoiding any shop that has more than one page of advert in LRO or atleast specify specificly that you want OEM when you buy, thats my experiance anyway.

[CNorman]

Have to say a lot of friend buy from Scorpion and find it very good.

Have to say from what i have seen that they produce excellent goods.

[Disco Matt]

Paddock are brilliant as are Famous Four - Paddock ease ahead in that race due to having a fully functional e-commerce site rather than having to phone orders in. As for parts, Delphi/de Carbon (shocks made by Delphi) seem fine, Bearmach are good although I only have a steering guard from them so have limited experience of their products!

[corrosiverob]

Paddock are brilliant as are Famous Four - Paddock ease ahead in that race due to having a fully functional e-commerce site rather than having to phone orders in. As for parts, Delphi/de Carbon (shocks made by Delphi) seem fine, Bearmach are good although I only have a steering guard from them so have limited experience of their products!

Agree with paddocks but be careful VAT to be added to stock prices!!

delivery approx 3-4 days

rob

[Range Rover Blues]

Paddocks are cheap, even for branded stuff, so never buy hong-kong-fuey wheel bearings but alwys get Timken.

I occasionally use Rimmer Bros, not cheap at all but if they say it's in the post it's in the post, they never let me down.

After a while you get to know which parts you can accept almost-fit-part on and which you can't, for example I always fit EBC pads and Delphi disks from Paddocks because for what they charge it's rude not to ;)

But then I fitted a Delphi cluth kit to the V8 and it hasn't lasted too long :shock:, I used britpart cylinders on it and they are fine, so you can't sweepingly say that all pattern parts are rubbish, just the crappy ones :lol:

[Jake]

Scorpion's stuff...Been there, done that, wouldn't go back now  :roll:
Is it true that Britpart own paddocks?
 :|

[CNorman]

OK who has actually had a bad experiance of Scorpion because i have never known anything bad from them and a lot of good.

[Jake]

OK who has actually had a bad experiance of Scorpion because i have never known anything bad from them and a lot of good.

Me
I had their 2" lift with Decarbons, winch bumper and rock sliders
The springs were horrible, the car wollowed really badly on round abouts and was scary at speed on motorways (i have since tried a Old Man Emu ste up and was amazed at how normal it feft with a 2" lift)
The dampers got too hot whilst laning and became useless
The rock sliders were fine (apart from being a complete rip of off the Mantec versions)
The bumper was fine too (untill i saw how easily they come apart when we destroyed one for fun)

A mate of mine had the Evolution kit on his Rangie and it keeped killing dampers
He replaced the Decarbons with Procomps and he went through 2 sets of those too
He then realised that it was to with the front shock towers which are designed to lower te shock down 2"
This is great if you are only going to take the vehicle on a twist off ramp but usless when the front wheel wants to travel upwards

Someone on here (i cant remember who) had a Scorpion rear radius arm break whilst travelling at speed on  motorway/A road
Fortunatly they survived the accident

[Guardian.]

scorpion, have of course had problems and breakeges, but look at the volume of gear they move!, a lot of people knock them, but majority buy their gear, i have a fair bit of scorpion on my trucks believe it or not, and from what ive had off them there is no quality issue, there are just a tad on the expensive side, but you get that in all walks of life.
some of you i know dont like that they just copied stuff (if they did?), but most of the stuff is the same stuff just different variations, a bumpers a bumper, steering guards  a steering guard, whats the difference between same / similar aftermarket goodies bolt ons, and all the crap you buy from the aftermarket service / spares items, bearings bushes, filters etc etc.
i think they get a lot of unececary stick for no good reason, just a lot of hearsay and scaremongery.

that said, dont buy there stuff, buy mine  :D

[wheels244]

I never even  contemplate buying Scorpian stuff for the simple reason they don't put the prices in their massive ads in LRO.
In my experience if someone doesn't list their price - they're too expensive.

[lee celtic]

M&M 4x4 the stuffs cheap and ok when  they get it right but if they send the wrong part they replace it but you have to pay again then send the first lot back for a credit. :(

It took 3 months for them to pick up an exhaust after ten phone calls then another 4 weeks to give me my money back ..

Chris the manager told me it was a one off and it wouldn't happen again and he would give me a good deal next time I bought something and guess what it did so now I buy from Paddocks

And I will not buy from them again which is a real shame as some of the deals they offer look great but I would rather spend the money else where and get good service. :D

[GreedyGibson]

I bought lift kit and winch from mailorder 4x4 and found them very helpfull and cheap had a missing bushkit from one of the shocks which they sent out 1st class no hassle and free would definatly use them again :)

[clbarclay]

M&M 4x4 the stuffs cheap and ok when  they get it right but if they send the wrong part they replace it but you have to pay again then send the first lot back for a credit. :(

It took 3 months for them to pick up an exhaust after ten phone calls then another 4 weeks to give me my money back ..

Chris the manager told me it was a one off and it wouldn't happen again and he would give me a good deal next time I bought something and guess what it did so now I buy from Paddocks

And I will not buy from them again which is a real shame as some of the deals they offer look great but I would rather spend the money else where and get good service. :D

It could have been worse Being relativerly local I went to see them about a wrong part I had been sold after a "sales advisor" :lol: measured (incurately) it to check it was what I was asking for. Having gone back once, descovered that the next size down was either too small or not availible I return home to discover that they had sent me away with a different filtre in the same box, so back I go to sort this out for a second time.....

After the down right rude, insolting and hurtful verbal abuse I got the second time from their customer service, its little wounder I haven't been back their since.

On the whole I've had reasonable service from them for years, but if you have any custome service issues with them then I wish you better luck than I had.

[boss]

scorpion are are a joke! they rip you off and half the staff are rude and the other half know nothing about the products. alot of the stuff that scorpion advertise as being scorpion products wasn't actually designed by them, there ripped off of companies like x-eng, equippe4x4 or southdown.
i hate them with a passion and as for people saying they haven't had a problem....its a case of you haven't had one yet!