In response to my last post I was asked the following on the GT40's forum:
I would have thought they would have gone directly to the C7 hub and 33 spline stub axle. Cheaper hub ($90) but still a X Tracker and with the larger/stronger 33 spline strength.
I don’t know what drove Superlite’s decision, but the dynamics of their procurement process is obviously different than ours and you would also need to take into account the pricing and availability of the larger-spline-count stub axle.
I’ve been talking with Hill McCarty at Agile Automotive about a new transaxle and during that process we discussed hubs. Long ago they had made modifications to support the latest version of the C6 ZR1 wheel bearings. Although they have never had any play in the bearings they age them out every two years. So that’s about 10 events per year, several of which are 24+ hours with the car pulling 2 lateral g’s. That’s a lot more abuse than my car will ever see — well, other than some launches :-)
Hill did point out that heat needs to be properly manged. While the aluminum upright does a pretty good job of wicking away heat so long as there is air flow, you need proper brake ducting if you’re pushing the car that hard.
With top-end C6 hubs the weak link is probably the CV joints. This is particularly true if you have a Graziano because the 4WD design, which is useless for a SL-C (at least so far), has asymmetric axles with the right axle being a good bit shorter. This puts more strain on the right-side CV joints.