2G New wheel bearings

[Gsavage2700]

Should I just run the oem hubs all around or is there any recommendations for an upgrade ?

 

[randman2011]

I don't really know of any upgraded hubs beyond the DSS ones designed for crazy upgraded half shafts, but what are you trying to achieve here? Please provide more info. Are you just a stock 2g with a failed wheel bearing? High HP build that keeps burning through driveline components?

 

[Kryndon]

I learned the hard way and I would advise you to KEEP your OEM hubs and just swap the bearings over. This however requires you to hammer them out and use a press, as well as cutting off the old stuck-on bearing race.

The problem with many aftermarket bearing+hub kits is that the hubs are ever so slightly oversized on the central outer diameter where the wheel centers on. So in my case when I changed my front left bearing for a hub+bearing set, both my Enkeis and Stealth wheels (all matching OEM centerbores) got disformed because essentially they were going over a slightly bigger center ring.

So now what I do is I just buy the bearing only and swap over the OEM hubs which are better quality anyway.

 

[jakelandry]

I built myself a set of ceramic wheel bearings last year. I intentionally bought 3 different bearings for the sole intent of testing the quality difference between each. On a 2g, front bearings are a koyo design, rear are a NTN. If it was me I’d just get any of the generics. They’re all 52100 steel that is torched then stone ground for a 1/2” or 7/16” steel ball bearing. Now obviously I do not have the tools to measure the grind profile or the ball sizes to the micron, but from what I could tell they’re all comparable. I actually do have a few cmm arms at work but I don’t know enough about programming them to measure a critical radius like that.

Ntn published a pamphlet on the rears that had the preload vs lifespan and after seeing that you can vary their loading from clearance to several hundred foot lbs of torque, I called it a day and said it wasn’t worth my time to worry about their machining tolerances.

 

[DJRace]

OEM is best unless your power is through the roof.

 

[Gsavage2700]

I don't really know of any upgraded hubs beyond the DSS ones designed for crazy upgraded half shafts, but what are you trying to achieve here? Please provide more info. Are you just a stock 2g with a failed wheel bearing? High HP build that keeps burning through driveline components?

Yeah just a stock 2g and I think my wheel bearing is out and I thought that if the wheel bearing is out I’d just have to buy the hub and wheel bearing all in one regardless I wanted to replace the hub I just want to refresh as much as I Can suspension and wheel wise . I just didn’t know if there any products out there that exceed oem performance

 

[Gsavage2700]

I learned the hard way and I would advise you to KEEP your OEM hubs and just swap the bearings over. This however requires you to hammer them out and use a press, as well as cutting off the old stuck-on bearing race.

The problem with many aftermarket bearing+hub kits is that the hubs are ever so slightly oversized on the central outer diameter where the wheel centers on. So in my case when I changed my front left bearing for a hub+bearing set, both my Enkeis and Stealth wheels (all matching OEM centerbores) got disformed because essentially they were going over a slightly bigger center ring.

So now what I do is I just buy the bearing only and swap over the OEM hubs which are better quality anyway.

I was going to buy moog hubs and replacing all of them at once but now I’m kinda second guessing it so you think I’m better off just take out the bearings themselves and pressing new ones on ?

 

[Kryndon]

Honestly you got two choices really, either keep the OEM hubs and press new bearings in (SKF are the best followed by Koyo), or if you want new hubs, take your wheel off and place the new hub/bearing onto the wheel to check if it fits concentrically. If it does, run it. If it also rubs, go with OEM hubs.

Here's a good video by Jason Drew:

You must be logged in to view this image or video.

 

[jakelandry]

Most of the aftermarket companies, even everyone’s favorite “reliable” timkin included, use the same manufacturer for the cast inner race. Someone casts, heat treats, and machines the inner race/hub and sends them out to all the other companies.

The other companies machine the outer races from stock or, apparently in the case of the video above, they machine half of the races and use the outer section of the hub as one race (which means you now have a 52100 outer race on one side, a casting of similar composition to 52100 on the inside, and likely 1018 which doubles as the hub and other race on the other side). From there the good companies probably bin the parts to find which races are dimensionally compatible and install ball bearings that have been sorted by micron to ensure they get 13 of the same size balls. They slap a trash nylon cage in there to keep the bearings spaced appropriately and press them together.

I had several different bearings in-hand and they all had removable races fwiw. They were KOYO, Timkin, NTN, and another generic cheap one that I got from Amazon for like 15 bucks. Surprisingly, the koyo had the “roughest” grind profile on the races but I wouldn’t say that equates to anything worth discussing. The Timkin was 100% comparable to the 15 dollar one but I would say Timkin likely had more quality control on the parts binning side of things. The koyo and ntn were obviously of higher quality in all regards.

Every time I’ve seen a gen 2 wheel bearing fail it has been from spalling on the inner race. Considering they all have the same inner race design, that leaves you to lubrication, ball quality/size discrepancies, and manufacturing profile on the races which you cannot quantity or know and can vary greatly between production runs or even worse once you get off the beaten path into the aftermarket parts providers.

If anyone cares to know more or any specifics feel free to reach out to me. I just realized that I never documented any of my findings and it may not be best to do it from my phone on a whim.