its fine to join the discussion but dont try sell anything as you have been contacted by a member of staff for doing that in the past.
Great stuff, thanks - for those that don't know, I've applied for Trader status and am waiting for the results but until then I won't be selling anything here, just answering questions / providing technical info relevant to the conversation. So to be clear.....don't ask me for prices or try to order, thanks!!!
Ok, a few facts to answer points people have raised:
- WMS is a UK brand, each kit is designed in the UK and the majority of the parts are made in the UK to our specifications/designs!
- External dust seals (or lack of) really is not an issue in our experience (in fact we offer a full no-quibble 12 month warrantee on the piston seals). No-one has ever taken us up on it for dust / corrosion related problems even on the mud covered rally cars that use WMS setups, just one or two where the seals had been "nicked" during assembly. If you run these calipers on a dune buggy or a mud racer you are still covered, no question.
- WMS vs Wilwood: I won't be draw into a slanging match, but we tend to be in the same price bracket as Wilwood stuff by chance and are not interested in undercutting deliberatly as a way of doing busines. We (once established in each sub-market - or forum!) rely on our reputation to get sales by word of mouth - of course this initial WMS kit has one-peice discs making it cheaper but future versions will have bells and rotors and will be a similar price to the 3G/Wilwood one but relying on other technological and performance selling points - not just a label and a price.
- 14"s: There will be some 14's that we can get a kit in on the Starlet (although it's a real pain to go smaller!), and some that we can't - also this will depend on demand but I've been asked quite a few times now.
- Reputation: You guys won't have heard of WMS as we are new to the Starlet, and of course Wilwood are a big international brand. That said we have a track record and good reputation among the cars we do offer kits for, there are lots of V6 and 3SGTE converted AW11 MR2s with our brakes for instance including some Woodsport cars (in fact their most one being a 3SGTE AE101, not an AW11 or SW20 like most of their jobs) - as well as BMW E30, Ford, Fiat and TVR race cars.
- Pad shape: The pads are a common motorsport shape, not a "Wilwood" shape, and other mfr use them as well. The WMS calipers are not copies of any Wilwood products.
- EP91/82 bores, we have only worked with an EP91 so far which is 55mm....abviously we won't have anything solid to say about the 54mm version of the EP82 until we offer a kit for it! To assume that just the bore changed would be negligent as Toyota like to mess with the offset as well throughout their model ranges / years.
- The disc thickness: The initial kit uses 22mm thickness discs, exactly the same as our E30 kits and if they are fine on 225bhp 1350kg German lumps round the Nurbergring then it's not going to be a massive problem - again we don't get reports of warped discs from existing customers. BUT....there is another disc that people can retro-fit that's 25mm thick if needs be (unlikely)....and beyond that there will be fast-cooling rotors once they are ready, these are planned to run "radially floating" so they can expand freely without any strain from old fashioned style bell mounting bolts (or indeed a one-peice disc's built in "bell") that can be the cause of warpage.
- Bigger still: the next step would be 300x20.5mm rotors, with 300x32mm as an option if real overkill is needed....and that 323x32mm one as there as well but the wheel size will get silly.
- As far as WMS one-peice kits not being up to serious track use, here are some of our V8 TVR lads taking it easy (both were racing on TV in the last year or two in the Dunlop Challange - not just trackday cars):
262x24mm
283x24mm