Hubs and Ball Joints

The Hoosier hubs arrived. As expected they are really nicely machined and very robust. The hub on the left is what came with the kit. It's made in the USA and better than the OEM one its based on. The only reason that I'm upgrading it is because I wanted a reluctor for traction/launch control.

The hub on the right is from Hoosier. It's a lot longer due to bigger bearings and the addition of the reluctor, sensor and the electrical connector. Also note how much thicker the flanges are; the round wheel flange is 0.5" vs. 0.3" and the rectangular upright flange is 0.46" vs. 0.32". The rectangular flange has threaded rather than clearance holes, so they'll have to be drilled. Interestingly the wheel flange has holes to support both press in and screw in studs. This is possible because the flange doesn't have the three large holes the OEM flanges have.

I tried to remove the uprights so that the lip mentioned in the previous post can be machined. The ball joints were stuck tight. It seems that many people beat on them with a hammer (not on this suspension!) or use a pickle fork, but I found this Ball Joint Separator from Harbor Freight. While it's not something I'm going to use very often it's worth $21.99. This video does a great job explaining how to use it.