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I recently bought new hubs to do an abs swap. After reading this thread I went and checked them out. Looks like they are not flat machined like the bad ones. I think they are just the cheapest thing I could get off rock auto.
Pros:
No extra stupid machining.
The casting is solid, flange is thicker than the Dorman one I have on the car now.
Takes the same Evo stud as the China Dorman rears (ARP 100-7717) so if you have those kicking around you only need one stud size with these. This is NOT the OEM front stud size.
Because the carrier is bigger it's stupid easy to get the bearings into the outer race.
Cons:
Doesn't use the OEM stud.
Bearing carriers look kinda shitty. The plastic on the outer race is so thin it cut me.
The outer race is larger than the NTN bearing's making it harder to get out. If it gets brittle with use you'll almost certainly break it getting it out of the hub.
Grease looks pretty crap, very waxy. I wouldn't use these without repacking.
Machining on the non-critical parts is kinda crappy, looks like there was a small void in the casting in between the inner and outer races.
Retention on the inner race is 4 tiny tabs on the carriers that you will break when you split it open.
The bearings looked good on my Dorman/NTN fronts so I just regreased them and put em back on. I'll use these as emergency spares/parts to sell to someone else at the track.
edit:
I don't have the tools/skills to see if the Dorman and this one have the same dimensions inside. I think this would be perfectly fine if you could throw OEM/NTN guts in it.
This has taken a long time to sort out but finally we can report some concrete progress and a resolution.
Big credit goes to this thread and everyone who contributed to nail down the problem area. As others have noted in this thread, the problem is you can't just say "X part number is good and X part number is bad" because it comes down to which factory made them. We sell Centric hubs. When we called them early last year about this issue, that got the ball rolling on their end to chase down the source of the issue, but of course they don't own the factories that are making these hubs so there is a lot of back and forth required to get things figured out. It's important to remember that from the factory's perspective, this is an OE replacement part intended for OE-type use, so both machining approaches are acceptable in their eyes. Regardless, that perspective certainly isn't acceptable for us, and the guys at Centric/Stoptech are a great group who are very performance-minded so they pushed to make things happen.
The reality is we (track community) are a small niche of the total hubs sold, so it takes a while and a lot of poking to get things catered to our niche needs of using the part outside of its design parameters. For the last year and a half our approach has been to unbox and visually check every hub before it leaves our warehouse, and when we ran into a bad one we sent it back to Centric - this way if you bought hubs from us you could rest assured you got ones that were fit for duty.
The good news is that Centric has concluded their investigation - they source hubs from two factories, Timken and NTN. All of the hubs with the undesirable machining came from Timken. That's not to say every Timken hub is bad, but all NTN hubs are good. The great news is that Centric has now assigned a new "Economy" part number to the Timken hubs to differentiate them from the "Premium" NTN hubs and furthermore they have physically gone through their entire stock of hubs and sorted them accordingly. Part numbers 405.45005 (non ABS) and 406.45006 (ABS) are from NTN, and part numbers 405.45005E (non ABS) and 406.45006E (ABS) denote the Economy line from Timken. I can't make any comments as to hubs from other brands, I'm sure if you call most online sources and ask what factory they came from they won't have a clue what to tell you. But, with Centric you know exactly what you're getting.
So moving forward, we now have solid confidence and even a part number differentiation courtesy of Centric so you know what you're getting instead of ordering and having to cross your fingers until they hit your doorstep. We will only be carrying the Premium NTN hubs at Goodwin Racing. In the words of Brad Abrams (Stoptech), trust but verify; we'll still be checking all of our inventory when our stock orders arrive here before putting them on the shelf, just to be extra sure for you guys, and I encourage everyone to always check your hubs personally when you receive them. That said, I anticipate that the days of this confusion are behind us.
Other notes... the ABS version of the hubs come at a lower cost, so the majority of our stock is going to be the ABS version because non-ABS cars can run these just the same. Also, for whatever reason, the ABS version come with axle nuts while our last shipment of non-ABS came without axle nuts. Just more reason to get the ABS version which are a lower price anyways.
This is a front hub off an S2 car that we built a few years ago. New owner probably has 50+ hrs on them. Not sure what brand but guessing install mid 2016, they were probably either Timken or Mazda. We never ran mystery meat hubs.
Interesting that even with minimal machining for stud seat, the crack still started there. Worked it's way over to the next weakest spot, the rotor lock hole. Lesson here is that no machining is acceptable without a substantially thicker hub flange.
Which is why we recently decided to develop our own hubs with thicker flanges and bigger bearing to be 100% compatible with OEM spindles, brakes, dust shields. No ETA pricing or specs as we just started. But we got tired of waiting for someone else to come up with a low cost but properly engineered and manufactured hub set.
Which is why we recently decided to develop our own hubs with thicker flanges and bigger bearing to be 100% compatible with OEM spindles, brakes, dust shields. No ETA pricing or specs as we just started. But we got tired of waiting for someone else to come up with a low cost but properly engineered and manufactured hub set.
So your not going with the hubs you’ve been running recently?
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New hubs
