For anyone in the Mazda scene, this is important to know. Beware the fancy boxes of SURE / Street Unit products.
SURE Motorsports - StreetUnit.com - Design Flaws,Danger And Part Failures!
Yea, seems like their reputation has been ruined especially on Mazdaspeedforums.org. I’ve been tempted to buy their stuff before because of cleanliness of design, packaging and marketing but usually the price has swung me to a different brand.
Honestly it seems like James Barone Racing is the best company to deal with and is producing the best products when it comes to Mazda/Mazdaspeed stuff and its still a relatively small, growing company. Great customer service and warranty. I’d go with JRB or Corksport. My Ultimate Racing exhaust is quite nice though.
man, these guys we’re almost the go-to company when I had my speed3. Sucks to see these issues.
James Barone started originally as just a dude selling some basic stuff. I had his short-throw plate, and it worked really well.
From what I know about the sitution is that Sure created some camber arms with some major flaws, whether it was design or material or production, and when they started breaking they didnt try to help anyone resolve their problems. No customer support, no refund or anything. They have since redesigned them it looks like but have left a huge mess and a lot of unhappy customers.
I’m running the JBR shift plate and solid bushings under my TWM shifter. First mod I did to the car in 2010. Their producsts looked like they were home-made, home packaged and everything. They work extremely well though ! JBR is constantly on Mazdaspeedoforums.org and seems to always be helping people resolve and issues or questions with JBR prodcuts. Im thinking about buying their intake and turbo inlet pipe haha
Yeah that sounds like a messy situation. Just goes to show that you have to be careful with aftermarket parts that are “off-road use only”. Sucks, though. You like to think that when you spend good money, that you’re getting a good product with support.
Definitely. Especially have to be careful with a relatively new car model too. New parts with short testing times usually breed poor quality parts.
Also goes to show you that sometimes small “mom & pop” type places are better than the fancy-dancy larger companies.
I’m willing to bet that, while street unit/SURE may look like a large company, it’s probably a smaller operation than you think. It’s easy to have a fancy website and post lots of cool things on the internet, but in the end, it’s a small business.
Yes, I can agree to that. After working in Marketing for years I can see how Sure could come across like that. Marketing, advertising, packaging can go a long way.
hmm I have a few SURE parts with 0 issuse…yet?
The quality of their parts seems top notch to me. I Guess I will have to be a little more leery is I pick up anything else from them.
That’s what kind of sucks for SURE in this situation. They seem to produce nice, well thought out products with no issues that I’ve heard of until this most recent one. Im pretty sure it was the camber arms they made for the 2010+ Speed3. I would buy products from them, just not those camber arms lol.
I guess they’ve redesigned them to fix the problems, but in the meantime they have shot themselves in the foot by not providing any type of customer service the Mazdaspeed guys. Whether it was refunding money, warranty, exchanges, discounts, or trying to help anyone out with service or support; basically just ignored everything. So now the Mazdaspeedforums are pretty much boycotting SURE and thus SURE may see a decline in sales.
I personally know the owner of SURE.
You’d all be surprised to know he grew up here in Buffalo.
I think the OP on Mazdaspeed forums has it out for him. Yes, there are some obvious design issues with some of the products. It happens. I’ve bought stuff from various other vendors which has not performed as good as stock, and no one has gone out of there way to tell EVERYONE, that they suck. Some of these issues lay with quality control issues, the others are pretty much Mazda only issues. I’ve yet to see a car that eats motor mounts like the speed series does.
Either way, I don’t think that bashing was deserved. Maybe I’m a bit biased. But for a such a small company that is going to be a devastating blow, when in reality things could have just been updated if the time was given.
Sobo, I thought for sure in your post you’d mention how much you LOVED your speed6, lol.
I’m with you on this. Shit happens and sometimes a company produces a product that fails from design aspect, material quality, or production flaws. It shouldnt happen, but it does. Doesn’t mean that a company should be shitted on the way SURE is getting dumped on. But it definitely sucks for SURE that MSF has the vendetta out for them, but from what I’ve heard, SURE didnt try to alleviate customers at all so that stinks for all parties involved.
Zoom zoom! haha
That thing made me want to burn it so bad.
So much potential… So poorly executed.
Yeah, not entirely sure what his deal is with that. He probably could have handled it better but now there’s not much he can do to get out of this situation. Once the community is in on it, you’re out.
The mazdaspeedforums.org community has a history of burning vendors at the stake, so to speak.
I heard about that! Who else have they burned?
That write up makes it seem like that company is slinging eBay quality garbage.
Whether it’s true or not…
i forget the names of the companies, but basically, nobody gets a second chance. There was a guy/company trying to develop a full turbo kit upgrade. He seemed to be posting with good updates and a few members had paid him. In the end, it was taking a LONG time to get units shipped while the R&D got done, and while he made plans to get the thing manufactured. In the end, they bashed him/them so hard that the guy had to go running with his tail between his legs.
Some criticism is certainly deserved for some vendors, but I think in some cases, maybe they should be warning their members about specific products, rather than demolishing an entire vendor’s reputation. And yeah, people are complaining about SU’s motor mount, but the car eats motor mounts on its own. That’s a Mazda flaw.
Yea the write up is pretty odd. Sure doesn’t produce garbage, just had a bad run of camber arms but apparently there’s more history to it.
Having no experience with any of it,
The packaging and presentation looks excellent.