I am so glad you made this upgrade!!!!! I have been thinking about this on my 4th gen. I want updates as you use and abuse these! If they are worth it on a car this fast; they should work for me and last.
Photography Credit: Wayne Presley (Corvette), J.G. Pasterjak (insert)
When’s the last time you thought about wheel hubs? When it came to our Corvette Z06 project, we didn’t think about the hubs too much–until we added about 100 more horsepower thanks to a built LS3 and a set of very sticky tires.
That’s when the trouble started.
At first we tried the economical route, using OE-style hubs and parts instead of going to full-on race hubs. We spent about $130 to $260 each time we needed replacements, which turned out to be pretty often.
After replacing the hubs far more times than we’d like to admit, we finally spent some real money on hubs that could actually take the power we were throwing at them: SKF X-Trackers, which we sourced from Stranoparts for around $400 each.
That might sound like a lot, but we look at these sort of parts as “buy once, cry once” items.
Besides being unable to find a Corvette owner whose X-Trackers failed them, the hubs were also straightforward to install:
I am so glad you made this upgrade!!!!! I have been thinking about this on my 4th gen. I want updates as you use and abuse these! If they are worth it on a car this fast; they should work for me and last.
I've never thought about wheel hubs. Even after more than doubling the power of many of my cars, the factory hubs were always fine. German vs Chevy I guess...
Honestly, we were dumb to try and "save money" on cheaper hubs. These are spendy, but the "buy once, cry once" law definitely applies.
docwyte said:I've never thought about wheel hubs. Even after more than doubling the power of many of my cars, the factory hubs were always fine. German vs Chevy I guess...
For whatever reason GM went with undersized hubs for the 4th gen F bodies. Once you go with sticky tires or wide 325 width sticky tires they just don't live very long. You can either change them often or get the adapters to run the X trackers. I just haven't wanted to spend the $1000 to get the brackets and hubs until I know the hubs are worth it. That's 4 sets of acceptable Moog hubs for me.
AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:docwyte said:I've never thought about wheel hubs. Even after more than doubling the power of many of my cars, the factory hubs were always fine. German vs Chevy I guess...
For whatever reason GM went with undersized hubs for the 4th gen F bodies. Once you go with sticky tires or wide 325 width sticky tires they just don't live very long. You can either change them often or get the adapters to run the X trackers. I just haven't wanted to spend the $1000 to get the brackets and hubs until I know the hubs are worth it. That's 4 sets of acceptable Moog hubs for me.
That's the logic I was using, too, until I started to just burn through the cheap ones like crazy. When the expenditure on multiple"cheap" hubs looked like it was going to pretty quickly overtake what it would have just cost to buy the good ones and be done with it, it was an easy decision. Plus the itch in the back of ny head wondering whether those budget hubs would fail at a 40mph autocross on a huge concrete pad, or a 110mph sweeper next to a steel retaining wall...
$400 each seems pretty reasonable to me.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Plus, with longer lasting hubs, you greatly increase the drive:wrench ratio!
535 horse to the wheels and I never ran into an issue with my hubs on my C5. Wish I could have said the same for every other driveline component. I did press ARP studs into the stockers.
Is it the actual hub that goes bad or just the bearing part?
BA5 said:Is it the actual hub that goes bad or just the bearing part?
Both. Bearings start to lop, but we had one where the flange just broke away from the hub itself. Tht could have been baaaaad.
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