Reviews of parts and the general value of them on EvoM...
May 30, 2010, 01:13 AM
#1
Reviews of parts and the general value of them on EvoM...
Greetings everyone.
I'm just here to write a rant about part reviews on car parts by the EvoM community. I've seen it happen numerous times now that someone has bought something that isn't really a good choice for his application, I've seen a few really BIG misses aswell.
Now here's the problem as I see it. Reviews often get written way too fast. I know you're all eager to tell the whole EvoM about your new xxxxxxxxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy that you bought from zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But that's not the right way to do it. I'll just post up the most common review types that mislead people into buying things that they don't want.
Usual suspect #1: Cheap coilovers
800$ coilovers suck. People with a LOT of experience (like SmikeEvo for example) can give you a lot of insight how he went from stock to Megan Track Coilovers and back to Bilsteins with springs.... But on EvoM, you can find atleast 3 topics a month praising coilovers like Megan, BC, K-Sport and those reviews go like this:
"I put on my new Megan Track coilovers CUSTOM SPRING RATES OF 15kF/19kR!!! They handle AMAZING. Recommend them to anyone looking for a cheap and AWESOME coilover." And then somewhere along the lines of the topic you see a "When did you put them on, how many miles on them?" and... "I put them on last week, covered a mountain twistie and 47 miles in city traffic. But they're GREAT!! Look at how they drop my car!". Anyways, 2 months later you can find the topic about how megan rattles, gives him no support and the front right upper piece cracked and the left one is blown etc etc... But on Evom, there's still a review of how awesome those coilovers are...
Usual Suspect #2: Brake Pads
Same as coilover reviews. People put on brake pads and make a review on how great they work for whatver they're doing with them. 7 posts later they say "I still got to brake them in!" (spelling intentional)... So how do you know they're so awesome? You don't but you're so confident about your purchase that you simply had to share it with everyone that you made a great purchase. This is the part where I got my *** handed to me on a plate. I bought Racing Brake ET500's that can't even handle an auto-x with an average speed of 35 mph for 5 laps. And they're the reason for this thread in the first place because I saw another awesome review of them... People you don't put enough weight in your reviews of one of the most important parts of your car. What do you do with the car? How do you drive? Where? How long did you drive before they started to fade?
OF COURSE THERE'S NO DUST IF YOU'RE NOT BRAKING!
Usual Suspect #3: Tires
This is probably the most misleading topic of all. There's so much GREAT information about how tires work, what's good about them and what's bad about them... Yet there's still people who believe that their all season tire is slightly worse than a Direzza Z1 Star Spec but that's just because they can drive in snow too. BULL-F'in-$#!T. When you're reviewing tires or even worse - recommending tires to someone. Tell them what you have, why do you like it and _WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR CAR_. Tires are a very simple math - lower treadwear rating, better tire but lasts less too. But that's not the end of it yet though... What kind of tread pattern? Stiff sidewalls? Do you even know how a soft sidewall affects the car handling? I've seen numerous awesome reviews of Toyo Proxes T1R. Those tires and the word Evo should never ever be used in the same sentance except in conjunction with the phrase "WTF". Also the most common stupidity I see related to tires: Stop recommending all seasons to people who ask for spirited driving tires. All seasons will get you around but they suck. And no, they don't handle well in snow either. Ask me how I know. I use summer tires for the spring summer and autumn while I use WINTER tires for the winter. Yes hardcore winter tires (Blizzak LM-35 for the next season, already waiting). If you want to drive your car in the ways intended from the factory, cutting corners with all season tires will not get you what you're looking for.
Usual Suspect #4: Clutch
Yes... Your Tilton Twin Carbon does shift like butter and it's super easy to daily drive. Your Exedy Twin HD doesn't have a stiff pedal either, it's LIKE STOCK. The ACT 4 puck is a smooth as silk clutch, no problem taking off uphill, no bucking and 100% sure not an on/off clutch like they say... Bull$hit. I understand that there's been a while since you last drove a stock clutch but the amount of stupid silly reviews I've seen on clutches is amazing. And they're all like stock. You can't really give advice to a person looking for a longevity daily driver clutch with his 300whp evo (that was an actual case) and the first reply in the topic was QUARTERMASTER TWIN! HOLDS TONS OF POWER! 300whp isn't a ton of power and it won't last him 10k miles of daily driving. I'll give a quick review here(my review that is): I have an Exedy Twin HD. It's got a ****in' stiff pedal, it holds the power (~360whp Dynojet) properly and it lasted me 40k miles before it needed a rebuild (that was with about 100+ launches). Just needed the replacement discs. It's an awesome clutch but I wouldn't really let a woman drive it as she might need to hold on to the steering wheel to push the clutch in. Was this so hard?
Usual Suspects, the rest of them:
Quality parts from eBay. Yes there's quality parts from eBay too... They're cheap too sometimes... But most of the time it's still you get what you pay for. Having said that, you can't really judge a quality of an exhaust manifold a week after you put it on. You can judge how much power it makes and how it affects spool but will it crack? Yes it probably will if you paid 120$ for it. When? Soon... Or maybe later. But it probably won't last as long as a Shearer manifold.
So that brings me to the conclusion of my rant. In short - if you want to help the community and review parts for everyone else, do it in a timely manner that relates to the part you are reviewing. Don't review clutches, brakes, coilovers a week after you bought them. Don't talk about how sticky a tire is if you've never even made it squeal. Whenever you write something publicly, someone will read it and maybe see it as a quality post and keep it in the back of his mind. Someone might actually base a purchase solely on your review. That's why it's VERY important to atleast try to be objective when doing reviews. A very common mistake I see in reviews is: I have xxx tires with yyy pads and zzz coilovers. They're all awesome. Uber awesome. Alright sir, they're awesome comapred to what? Your 95 civic? Hoosier A6 slicks? What's awesome about them? How does the car perform compared to the previous parts you had on the car (that you forgot to mention) ?
Blah... Getting carried away again. That's it. Use your head next time before you write a stupid review.
Cheers,
Tox
I'm just here to write a rant about part reviews on car parts by the EvoM community. I've seen it happen numerous times now that someone has bought something that isn't really a good choice for his application, I've seen a few really BIG misses aswell.
Now here's the problem as I see it. Reviews often get written way too fast. I know you're all eager to tell the whole EvoM about your new xxxxxxxxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy that you bought from zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But that's not the right way to do it. I'll just post up the most common review types that mislead people into buying things that they don't want.
Usual suspect #1: Cheap coilovers
800$ coilovers suck. People with a LOT of experience (like SmikeEvo for example) can give you a lot of insight how he went from stock to Megan Track Coilovers and back to Bilsteins with springs.... But on EvoM, you can find atleast 3 topics a month praising coilovers like Megan, BC, K-Sport and those reviews go like this:
"I put on my new Megan Track coilovers CUSTOM SPRING RATES OF 15kF/19kR!!! They handle AMAZING. Recommend them to anyone looking for a cheap and AWESOME coilover." And then somewhere along the lines of the topic you see a "When did you put them on, how many miles on them?" and... "I put them on last week, covered a mountain twistie and 47 miles in city traffic. But they're GREAT!! Look at how they drop my car!". Anyways, 2 months later you can find the topic about how megan rattles, gives him no support and the front right upper piece cracked and the left one is blown etc etc... But on Evom, there's still a review of how awesome those coilovers are...
Usual Suspect #2: Brake Pads
Same as coilover reviews. People put on brake pads and make a review on how great they work for whatver they're doing with them. 7 posts later they say "I still got to brake them in!" (spelling intentional)... So how do you know they're so awesome? You don't but you're so confident about your purchase that you simply had to share it with everyone that you made a great purchase. This is the part where I got my *** handed to me on a plate. I bought Racing Brake ET500's that can't even handle an auto-x with an average speed of 35 mph for 5 laps. And they're the reason for this thread in the first place because I saw another awesome review of them... People you don't put enough weight in your reviews of one of the most important parts of your car. What do you do with the car? How do you drive? Where? How long did you drive before they started to fade?
OF COURSE THERE'S NO DUST IF YOU'RE NOT BRAKING!
Usual Suspect #3: Tires
This is probably the most misleading topic of all. There's so much GREAT information about how tires work, what's good about them and what's bad about them... Yet there's still people who believe that their all season tire is slightly worse than a Direzza Z1 Star Spec but that's just because they can drive in snow too. BULL-F'in-$#!T. When you're reviewing tires or even worse - recommending tires to someone. Tell them what you have, why do you like it and _WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR CAR_. Tires are a very simple math - lower treadwear rating, better tire but lasts less too. But that's not the end of it yet though... What kind of tread pattern? Stiff sidewalls? Do you even know how a soft sidewall affects the car handling? I've seen numerous awesome reviews of Toyo Proxes T1R. Those tires and the word Evo should never ever be used in the same sentance except in conjunction with the phrase "WTF". Also the most common stupidity I see related to tires: Stop recommending all seasons to people who ask for spirited driving tires. All seasons will get you around but they suck. And no, they don't handle well in snow either. Ask me how I know. I use summer tires for the spring summer and autumn while I use WINTER tires for the winter. Yes hardcore winter tires (Blizzak LM-35 for the next season, already waiting). If you want to drive your car in the ways intended from the factory, cutting corners with all season tires will not get you what you're looking for.
Usual Suspect #4: Clutch
Yes... Your Tilton Twin Carbon does shift like butter and it's super easy to daily drive. Your Exedy Twin HD doesn't have a stiff pedal either, it's LIKE STOCK. The ACT 4 puck is a smooth as silk clutch, no problem taking off uphill, no bucking and 100% sure not an on/off clutch like they say... Bull$hit. I understand that there's been a while since you last drove a stock clutch but the amount of stupid silly reviews I've seen on clutches is amazing. And they're all like stock. You can't really give advice to a person looking for a longevity daily driver clutch with his 300whp evo (that was an actual case) and the first reply in the topic was QUARTERMASTER TWIN! HOLDS TONS OF POWER! 300whp isn't a ton of power and it won't last him 10k miles of daily driving. I'll give a quick review here(my review that is): I have an Exedy Twin HD. It's got a ****in' stiff pedal, it holds the power (~360whp Dynojet) properly and it lasted me 40k miles before it needed a rebuild (that was with about 100+ launches). Just needed the replacement discs. It's an awesome clutch but I wouldn't really let a woman drive it as she might need to hold on to the steering wheel to push the clutch in. Was this so hard?
Usual Suspects, the rest of them:
Quality parts from eBay. Yes there's quality parts from eBay too... They're cheap too sometimes... But most of the time it's still you get what you pay for. Having said that, you can't really judge a quality of an exhaust manifold a week after you put it on. You can judge how much power it makes and how it affects spool but will it crack? Yes it probably will if you paid 120$ for it. When? Soon... Or maybe later. But it probably won't last as long as a Shearer manifold.
So that brings me to the conclusion of my rant. In short - if you want to help the community and review parts for everyone else, do it in a timely manner that relates to the part you are reviewing. Don't review clutches, brakes, coilovers a week after you bought them. Don't talk about how sticky a tire is if you've never even made it squeal. Whenever you write something publicly, someone will read it and maybe see it as a quality post and keep it in the back of his mind. Someone might actually base a purchase solely on your review. That's why it's VERY important to atleast try to be objective when doing reviews. A very common mistake I see in reviews is: I have xxx tires with yyy pads and zzz coilovers. They're all awesome. Uber awesome. Alright sir, they're awesome comapred to what? Your 95 civic? Hoosier A6 slicks? What's awesome about them? How does the car perform compared to the previous parts you had on the car (that you forgot to mention) ?
Blah... Getting carried away again. That's it. Use your head next time before you write a stupid review.
Cheers,
Tox
Last edited by Toxin; May 30, 2010 at 04:28 AM.
Yes, on all accounts. 
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May 30, 2010, 04:42 AM
#8
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Excellent post about posts! LOL Hey SmikeEvo can we sticky this or even better make a parts review section that has quality reviews of parts and have a format for it? Something like part, date installed, miles driven, power before/after, skid pad, braking distance, etc etc? I know EvoM has a lot of great reviews in the different sections but it takes a lot of weeding through crap posts to get the meat out of them.
Toxin, I couldn't agree with you more!
Josh
Toxin, I couldn't agree with you more!
Josh
May 30, 2010, 05:08 AM
#10
Excellent post about posts! LOL Hey SmikeEvo can we sticky this or even better make a parts review section that has quality reviews of parts and have a format for it? Something like part, date installed, miles driven, power before/after, skid pad, braking distance, etc etc? I know EvoM has a lot of great reviews in the different sections but it takes a lot of weeding through crap posts to get the meat out of them.
Toxin, I couldn't agree with you more!
Josh
Toxin, I couldn't agree with you more!
Josh
). Many are not familiar with how to collect and interpolate data. We do have a parts review area:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/se...ng-review-176/
What I like to see (and do) in a review:
- Clear: be to the point. High quality writing and logical thread layout.
- Format: Use bold, underline, and italics to help the reader.
- Whole Picture: give all the information. What is the cars purpose? Other specifications that would relate to your review?
- Pictures and Video: show people. Its often important to show what you are talking about.
- Proofread: its OK to edit. I often write head to thread. Sometimes I make a typo. Thats OK, use the edit button.
- Truth: be truthful. Tell the FACTS. Hey, if something does have some issues to work out, its OK to talk about them. That does not mean bash, it means act like an adult and layout what you are experiencing. Manufactures do use what we say to correct or improve a product. But if you approach it childishly, they will discount your input.
My example:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...ow-review.html
May 30, 2010, 05:30 AM
#11
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Lets use here to draft up what a quality review looks like. Then I will cut and paste into a final format. The problem is that many people, to no fault of their own, do not have a means to skid pad, braking distance, etc. And most people are people (read, not scientists or engineers at NASA ). Many are not familiar with how to collect and interpolate data.
We do have a parts review area:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/se...ng-review-176/
What I like to see (and do) in a review:
- Clear: be to the point. High quality writing and logical thread layout.
- Format: Use bold, underline, and italics to help the reader.
- Whole Picture: give all the information. What is the cars purpose? Other specifications that would relate to your review?
- Pictures and Video: show people. Its often important to show what you are talking about.
- Proofread: its OK to edit. I often write head to thread. Sometimes I make a typo. Thats OK, use the edit button.
- Truth: be truthful. Tell the FACTS. Hey, if something does have some issues to work out, its OK to talk about them. That does not mean bash, it means act like an adult and layout what you are experiencing. Manufactures do use what we say to correct or improve a product. But if you approach it childishly, they will discount your input.
My example:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...ow-review.html
). Many are not familiar with how to collect and interpolate data. We do have a parts review area:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/se...ng-review-176/
What I like to see (and do) in a review:
- Clear: be to the point. High quality writing and logical thread layout.
- Format: Use bold, underline, and italics to help the reader.
- Whole Picture: give all the information. What is the cars purpose? Other specifications that would relate to your review?
- Pictures and Video: show people. Its often important to show what you are talking about.
- Proofread: its OK to edit. I often write head to thread. Sometimes I make a typo. Thats OK, use the edit button.
- Truth: be truthful. Tell the FACTS. Hey, if something does have some issues to work out, its OK to talk about them. That does not mean bash, it means act like an adult and layout what you are experiencing. Manufactures do use what we say to correct or improve a product. But if you approach it childishly, they will discount your input.
My example:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...ow-review.html
Part (and part number if available)
Purchase price (actual purchase price DO NOT include shipping and any other expense involved this should be if I walked in with cash, what would I have paid)
Purchased from (vendor, private party, shop etc)
Shipping cost (shipping and handling)
Core required?
Condition (new or used, miles if known or track days if a specific enough part)
Condition or experience before install (ie brake squeal, tires bald, clutch slipping etc)
Ease of install on a 1 to 10 scale (this will be subjective, I think a clutch is a 4 but time consuming, others would think a clutch is an 8 because of a lack of experience or tools)
miles since install (required that break in is over before writing a review!!!)
positives (subjective to end user)
negatives (same as above)
BRIEF narrative on thoughts of quality, things that could make it better, what made you decide to buy this part as opposed to vendor X's similar part.
Once someone submits a review it would be nice if it could be locked so only that person or a mod or admin could add to it. That way you avoid the flaming and bashing that goes on or "discussions" that some vendors have with each other in peoples threads. Also this would allow the OP to come back periodically and post updates that could be easily found without trying to read 17 pages of stuff like "nice" or "that looks awesome" or "CBRD FTW!!" (I like CBRD BTW) If someone like Toxin or myself or another moderator would be willing to review the posts in a section like this it would make for an awesome tool for people. Let me know if I can help.
Josh
May 30, 2010, 05:31 AM
#12
We do have a parts review area:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/se...ng-review-176/
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/se...ng-review-176/
I think that the forum you recommended lacks order. It would need sorting like the normal forums.
Engine/Turbo/Drivetrain/Wheels/Tires/Brakes/Suspension etc. Because mixing up how someone enjoys the abs plastic wing for their 2002 lancer and how someone is pleased with david buschur's air filter while adding some "Thanks Driveline sales for getting my parts in less than 12 weeks" doesn't go together.
It's either parts review or services review. And parts need to be separated.
May 30, 2010, 05:39 AM
#13
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Focus
LIGHT WEIGHT- big difference there will make even slight braking/suspension/traction improvements seem more noticable
FWD another biggie
hatch not important
blue oval- ugh LOL
smaller rims and tires- doesn't seem important but you know as well as I do that unsprung weight makes a huge difference as well as lever arm factor on the size of rims and tires.
Not saying that other brands can't make beneficial reviews of a vendor or specific product category but if it isn't being reviewed on an Evo on EvoM what is the point?
Josh
May 30, 2010, 06:44 AM
#15
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Josh