- Joined
- Mar 13, 2016
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- Titusville, Florida
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- Tommy
- Vehicle(s)
- '15 GT PP
I'm not sure what Supercars is but as far as the rear bearing failures are concerned which torque procedure do you use? Which axle nut are you using? What change in ride height on the rear are you at and which axle do you use?
We offer a jam nut for the rear axle to help prevent loss of bearing pre-load. Once the new nut is properly torqued our jam nut is torqued to 100 lb/ft to lock the axle nut from moving.
To address costs, everything is consumable, an oil change is $100, brake pads and rotors are $1000's depending on your usage rates. Stock wheel studs have a very high failure rate, for street use they are fine but the loading and heat cycling for track use are much higher along with the higher removal rates, and the number of torque cycles. A street car may have the wheels removed 100 times in a lifetime, a track car could see 500 times a season depending on how many events.
A slip on spacer used with extended studs virtually will not cycle out (they eventually get beat up over time) and the consumable is just the wheel studs. If you have a hub bearing failure, the studs are still reusable as long as they are in their lifetime window. Pressing them out of an old hub into a new hub does not cycle them. They don't know they where installed into a new hub, only how many times they have been torqued to clamp a wheel on.
Bolt on spacers are a bad idea for all of the above. The biggest failure point you introduce is the loads to clamp a wheel onto the hub. Rather than a single stud that passes through the hub out through the wheel, you now have the OE stud passing through the hub being torqued to an aluminum spacer. You have a steel hub, aluminum spacer with different thermal growth rates. This part becomes the 'permanent' part of the hub assembly. So it is never inspected, or re-torqued.
The second problem with bolt-on spacers is the most critical part of the clamping load, the clamping of the wheel to the hub, is now forced to utilize an aluminum ring (the spacer) to contain the wheel studs the wheel clamps with. The lug nuts that attach the spacer to the car need to be flush, that means on a 25mm spacer you have to machine out most of the spacer to accommodate the lug nut. This creates a high stress area (just as it does on the wheel). On this same ring of material you now need to machine a pocket for the wheel stud in the left over empty space of the spacer. That stud is pressed into the aluminum, a hardened steel stud into relatively soft aluminum. Now when you torque the wheel to the bolt on spacer you are relying on the aluminum to prevent that stud from pulling through it. Aluminum is excellent in compression, makes an ideal spacer material, when you rely on it to also to perform duties in tension, not so much.
A slip on spacer with the proper length stud introduces ZERO additional points of failure. A bolt-on spacer introduces 10 new points of failure because you are compromising the OE fastener and adding 5 more. You can not see a failure of the bolt on spacer while the wheel is still attached, only once the wheel leaves the vehicle, always at the most un-oppurtune time.
We offer a jam nut for the rear axle to help prevent loss of bearing pre-load. Once the new nut is properly torqued our jam nut is torqued to 100 lb/ft to lock the axle nut from moving.
To address costs, everything is consumable, an oil change is $100, brake pads and rotors are $1000's depending on your usage rates. Stock wheel studs have a very high failure rate, for street use they are fine but the loading and heat cycling for track use are much higher along with the higher removal rates, and the number of torque cycles. A street car may have the wheels removed 100 times in a lifetime, a track car could see 500 times a season depending on how many events.
A slip on spacer used with extended studs virtually will not cycle out (they eventually get beat up over time) and the consumable is just the wheel studs. If you have a hub bearing failure, the studs are still reusable as long as they are in their lifetime window. Pressing them out of an old hub into a new hub does not cycle them. They don't know they where installed into a new hub, only how many times they have been torqued to clamp a wheel on.
Bolt on spacers are a bad idea for all of the above. The biggest failure point you introduce is the loads to clamp a wheel onto the hub. Rather than a single stud that passes through the hub out through the wheel, you now have the OE stud passing through the hub being torqued to an aluminum spacer. You have a steel hub, aluminum spacer with different thermal growth rates. This part becomes the 'permanent' part of the hub assembly. So it is never inspected, or re-torqued.
The second problem with bolt-on spacers is the most critical part of the clamping load, the clamping of the wheel to the hub, is now forced to utilize an aluminum ring (the spacer) to contain the wheel studs the wheel clamps with. The lug nuts that attach the spacer to the car need to be flush, that means on a 25mm spacer you have to machine out most of the spacer to accommodate the lug nut. This creates a high stress area (just as it does on the wheel). On this same ring of material you now need to machine a pocket for the wheel stud in the left over empty space of the spacer. That stud is pressed into the aluminum, a hardened steel stud into relatively soft aluminum. Now when you torque the wheel to the bolt on spacer you are relying on the aluminum to prevent that stud from pulling through it. Aluminum is excellent in compression, makes an ideal spacer material, when you rely on it to also to perform duties in tension, not so much.
A slip on spacer with the proper length stud introduces ZERO additional points of failure. A bolt-on spacer introduces 10 new points of failure because you are compromising the OE fastener and adding 5 more. You can not see a failure of the bolt on spacer while the wheel is still attached, only once the wheel leaves the vehicle, always at the most un-oppurtune time.
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