Brad Dyer recently bought a used late model — and with it old hubs. He made this discovery at his shop after running the B-main and failing to qualify for the XR Workin’ Man Series feature at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tennessee, on April 11.
“I was running the cushion, and the track was rough,” Dyer, of Mohawk, Tennessee, said. “I don’t know if that had something to do with it or not. After buying the car, the guy who sold it to us told us the hubs were older, so we checked them good.”
Dyer also noted that he torqued his lug nuts to 100 ft-lb.
“We’ve always used 100 ft-lb of torque, and never had anything break loose,” said Dyer. “We put them on with a torque wrench, not an air gun. When the car came in and we took the wheel off everything was still tight, but the hub’s ears were still attached to the back of the wheel.”
Dyer was thankful for not qualifying for the feature.
“It wasn’t meant to be for a reason,” Dyer said.
Curt Iseli, of Winters Performance Products, the manufacturer of the hub, offered the following advice:
“Hubs, like all driveline components, must be replaced at regular intervals. They are highly stressed parts, and they are designed to withstand those stresses. But when a car has contacted a wall or another car, or has run hundreds of shows over the course of several seasons, the hubs should be replaced. The force of an impact can cause hairline fractures that can lead to failures, as seen with this hub. It’s generally not advisable to purchase used hubs with more than a season on them, and even then you have to ask the seller a lot of questions about the detailed history of those hubs. And you have to trust the seller’s answers. In many cases the cost of a new set of hubs is worth the peace of mind.”
Source
Winters Performance Products
York, Pennsylvania
717-764-9844
wintersperformance.com
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
