OEM hub, pulled out of a junkyard ~2 years ago. Never seen duty on a forced induction or V8-powered car, just a 140whp HPDE/sprint/enduro car. How old are your hubs?

 

Oh lord. That could have gotten really bad, really quick. Can not believe it didnt roll.

 

Keith can relate - just last weekend...


Were there any early signs of this that you may have caught in hindsight? Lucky it stayed upright and nobody was close enough to T bone you as you came around.

 

In light of recent events I proclaim May to be National Hub Awareness Month.

The official color for this campaign will be skid-mark brown in honor of Andrew and Keith's tighty whiteys which succumbed to this tragic and entirely preventable condition.

 

Any pictures of the broken hub? Your slowmo video shows what looks to be a brake rotor passing you.

 

Wow! This just happened to me yesterday - turn 17 at Sebring. I'll post the video soon.

What can we check / inspect to prevent this from happening?

 

Hrm, I thought recently about ordering some rear hubs when I was ordering front hubs, but I thought "meh, only really seen one failure..." Starting to rethink that. Mine have at least 150-200 track days on them, 92K miles, or however you want to look at it.

Do you have a picture of what failed?

robert

 

Pics here.

Definitely a brake rotor.

 

You folks with failures: any idea how many days/hours/miles were on your hubs? Were you running street tires, NT01s, A6s, or what?

robert

 

Good to see that you're ok. I checked my rear hubs after I lost a wheel at Laguna Seca. :( I had V8R aftermarket hubs, though. Not sure if Keith had the same aftermarket hubs as I did or the factory ones. The one that didn't fail has a nasty hair-line crack running all the way around the base on both sides:

Big pics with obvious cracks. The second one shows several radial cracks, too.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8039/8...38082cc7_o.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8040/8...9f4c1778_o.jpg

 

The hub on my car had 22k street miles and 12k track miles on it when it failed. The hub was originally installed on a 2000 SE, and swapped into my 1993 NA as part of a complete rear sub-frame assembly.
My car makes 185rwhp and I mostly use Hoosier 225/45/15 R6 or A6 tires. Hoosier 205/50/15 R6 tires were on the car at the time of failure.

 

Good grief. I guess I might as well add rear hubs to the shopping list for when I do the brake upgrade.

 

I missed that the second video was Tanner's. Taken from his blog:
"It turns out that this was a known problem with the V8Roadsters hubs, which led to a redesign several years ago."

Hmm.. So a nonstandard hub?

 

I actually changed my rear bearings this weekend. Ive never seen a rear fail, but I figured for $20 dollarbucks per side, why not? Looks like that was a good decision based on the bearings that came out.

Now Im wondering if I shouldnt have stuck a new hub in there while I was there.

 

Any failed hubs from cars that didn't run anything stickier than RA1's?

 

Wow!
I know guys with "other" cars talk about driving the wheels off it, but
You guys actually do it!

So it looks like failure is not just with the v8r hubs but also some stock hubs.
I know there were some companies that were "broaching" hubs for the v8 conversion axles to fit.
I'm assuming v8r does not build their hubs this way?

 

At first I've never heard of this occurring on miatae, now everyone and their mother are killing hubs?

 

Three different hubs being discussed here:

1. OEM. Three known failures (myself, CoralDoc, and a Socal SM guy with a ton of hours on his car)
2. V8R 3/8" (old). Two known failures, possibly three. Keith and Mike, and potentially a third (not sure if he broke an old V8R hub or a rebroached OEM hub).
3. V8R 1/2", no known failures

I didn't get any pics of mine, but I still have the spindle and axle. My failure looks identical to CoralDoc's, all the way down to the crack pattern in the brake rotor.

I'll still use OEM hubs, but they'll be brand new from Mazda and I'll change them once a year.

 

You should have.

It's the hubs that are failing, not the bearings.


So what are people buying that aren't failing? New "redesigned" v8r hubs?

Read the thread an posted before i refreshed to see the one above me.

Edit2*
This is somewhat common, and has happened before on stock hubs, on spec miatas. Here is one for example. Pictures inside:
XceedSpeed

 

Dam Keith asked me if I ever had an issue wondering if it was a high hp issue and I haven’t. Maybe time to put some new rear hubs on.

Bob