Originally Posted By dusterpt440
Originally Posted By jcc


My beef is with the dainty alum wilwood hubs, the bearings are what they are, and that track induced braking heat weakens them, find any graph online that suits your fancy, it is still a fact, especially at the temps we might see on the track, and the drop off in strength is sharp and profound. Choose whatever decrease in strength you can accept is your choice, I'm not changing my driving line because of poorly chosen, lightweight alum drag hubs. Stating alum cools faster and therefore not an issue, completely ignores the fact it also heats faster, the bearing issue dovetails with the this, because smaller bearings/races are more likely mire prone to the heat expansion issues of the hub, in addition to the observation the wilwood hubs are not a Robust design, ie very thick in stressed areas, even when compared to steel OEM hubs, and alum needs to be thicker then steel in almost every case in similar applications, but you know all that.


Okay, been watching this back and forth. I think what csmopar is trying to say, or at least how I understand it from his posts, is that wilwoods uses aluminum hubs on ALL their kits for all brands. So if the hubs were an issue, they'd be having that issue on all brands. Also, seeing csmopar's challenge above about finding an example online of a wilwood hub failing, I tried as well, I didn't find anything when search "wilwood hub failure" other than this very thread. So maybe it has happened but perhaps it was years ago? I just dont know.

while I was doing that though, I decided to check other "name brand" brake kits and see what they use for hubs for both mopar and mustang II.

Baer Brakes: Uses aluminum hubs for all their big brake "road race kits" regardless of make or model, ford,chevy,mopar, etc

Brembo: doesn't make kits for either, but scrolling thru the kits they do make, they also use aluminum hubs

Aerospace: Aluminum hubs on ALL kits

Wilwood: aluminum hubs on ALL kits

Strange: Aluminum hubs on ALL kits

SSBC: Aluminum hubs on ALL kits(kind of a misnomer considering their name)

Heidts: Aluminum hubs on all kits for all brands



These are just the companies i knew off of top of my head, others dont make kits for mopars, like brembo, but their hubs are aluminum as well. Yes, you can get cast iron hubs from any of the above, if you want stock brake rotors that aren't drill or slotted and that feature 1 or maybe 2 pistons. From what I' seen this morning, you CANNOT get an aftermarket brake system without getting aluminum hubs.

So based on this, jcc, I think csmopar is right and I dont think his comment about you grasping at straw was off base or uncalled for. Im beginning to think you have something else to prove and are simply putting down mustang II spindles like you've tried to this entire thread. Mustang II spindles are used throughout the hobby, arguably as popular or more popular than C5 spindles. Surely if there was a problem, someone somewhere would report it.


You seem to keep avoiding my main contention, heat effects alum much more significantly then steel. Why?

Wilwood is the typically lightest alum hub from what I have seen. I thought my point was understanding that wilwood using any small bearing makes for a small hub, a large bearing, even though having higher bearing capacity, makes for a larger (stronger hub). The others I have less experience with. Alum can be and is best solution in almost all applications, IF the design is correct, concerning material, material thickness, additional cooling to reduce brake generated heat, and finally the intended application, drag vs open track, vehicle weight, track speeds, braking duty, driving style, tire/wheel combos, etc. Your list only means no one has reported failures or are not reaching the limits (show cars?), not that the design is ideal. I guess this discussion should really be for those that have track time that have actually had on track heat related brake issues/concerns vs those that have not. I'm speaking from the former.

There are racing organizations (and/or manufacturers) that do not allow RF alum hubs, I suspect that reasoning is more based on fatigue failure from repeated high loads.

The Ron Sutton alum hubs for instance and the Wilwood alum hubs are light years apart, and not intended to be part of this discussion.


Reality check, that half the population is smarter then 50% of the people and it's a constantly contested fact.