"Lifetime hubs"

That will take a lifetime to test...

 

... only the lifetime of the hub...

 

Yeah another ABS required post here. If you're not using it, you're doing it wrong.

I'm not sure how much catering to the auto-x market you need to do though. The current set of repacked detriot axle hubs have been on there for over a season, I stopped going through them when I threw the torque wrench out and just started standing on the pipe over the breaker bar when torquing them.

 

I would buy them and don't need no abs crap if they last. The car sees 15 track days a year roughly, no streets, hoosier tires.

 

I have 4 detroit axle hubs in my garage that I bought planning to rebuild with amsoil grease and new ball bearings. Glad to hear that your rebuilt ones worked well.

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone, HPE is looking at possible ABS sensor integration again now that there is some demand for it. I'd like to still offer a non-abs option that will omit the cost of the sensor as well for those who don't want it.

 

Question: Does anyone care about hub protrusion? Another area we can expand into for fitting bearing options is outward. I doubt anyone is running stock wheels or center caps, and I'm not talking about crazy protrusion, something less than even with a 6UL face for example.

 

Doesn't bother me

 

Just remember I only do around 2-4 hours of competition time a season and with the 6 speed and 3.63 for half the season I was topping out at 69mph at 8500 (that poor motor, so much rev limiter).

I almost feel like it might be a better course of action to just make properly built or rebuild stock hubs. The design isnt particularly bad. More than likely it just needs tolerance cleanup, and some hard coating in the races. A nice DLC coating all over a new hub with a focus on the inner races (cost should be ~$10 a hub if you do a couple thousand per batch), higher grade *****, and resetting of clearance (surface grind or lap the faces of the inner races where they come together) to some number that you're going to have to derive experimentally. Or if the DLC doesnt decrease the amount the outer races are being smooshed (technical term) by the ***** a through harden might be all thats required to extend the life. At least thats how the bearings on my car fails, the hub side bearing races deform to the point that there's too much clearance in the bearing, ***** look fine, thats caused by either the surface hardness of the race being too low and/or too large of a difference in ball size.

If we were breaking hubs it would be one thing wanting to start from scratch, but we're really just expecting too much from a bearing that is mass produced to be able to take stock car loads for the duration of the warranty. Using the same design but treating it like a precision high load bearing should yield significant results. For example a pair of typical medium duty angular contact bearing (which our current setup is) should be able to withstand ~1500 miles of full corner loading from my car. So thats like 1200 laps on the daytona oval before the right front hub wears out.

 

Endurance racing. Flat spot can cost the team the whole shabang.

 

Road racers are breaking front hubs. I've seen it from others and done it myself.

 

I think I might be interested if there is an ABS version that would work with my 04 MSM.

Not to change the subject but j man mentioned 2 different sensors and trigger rings used on late model NB/MSM changing mid year in 04. I only see 1 part number listed for all 04 and 05 MSM's for rings/sensors. No change at a certain VIN # or anything like that but I've only checked on Avondale Mazda's site so far. He got me curious if that is true and what I have if it is. Have to do some more checking.

 

interested

 

The "good design" hubs or the shitty ones. IIRC in the hub mega thread we outlined two or three different hubs and all but one had glaring flaws.

 

When you consider that the stock hubs were designed for skinny rims and street tires, and are now being used on cars with 10" rims with slicks, 400+ horsepower and massive aero, it's amazing that they last at all.

From the design standpoint, it seems that the bearing races being built into the front hubs limits the hardness of the races. Even with improved bearings and grease, fatigue from excessive loads are going to cause galling, brinelling, overheating, grease failure, etceteras. The answer is a different design.

Even then, you may see hub failures from the simple fact that the loads on the hubs may cause failure over time. No one wants to go bigger and heavier on an unsprung item, but sometimes it can't be avoided.

 

I am more concerned about legality of class racing.

what's the point if you aren't allowed to run them.

anyone see an issue with most popular Miata classes ?

 

Classes with restrictions often run less extreme tires.
Points classes is another animal, and there you can seldom plan what the decent mix of mods will be two years from now. So either racers use whatever's on the market at rule publication or they don't like to gamble and use the old trusted repacked ones.

With measly 205 Rcomps on 9" I seem to run 5 years between replacement on the LF. But that's less than 30hours.

Where's the custom spindles with mounts for radial calipers, ABS provision, exchangeable steering arms, just dropped 1/2" and larger bearings?

 

Bump: HPE moved shop locations but has picked this work back up again. Current consideration is an aluminum hub to house the tapered roller bearings in and slide onto the stock upright. Would this be a restriction in any classes or groups that folks run in? I'm not familiar with NASA/SCCA rulings.

 

.

 

So, HPE says they are coming soon in April. What's the status? Nothing on their website and have to dig through a lot on FB.