Short story of mine.

This happened last year. My conclusion was that I ran out of luck and had a bad hub (or axle), and they broke. No one was hurt when it broke. I didn't bother adressing the problem as everything looked fine. I am **** concerning my car's maintenance, to prevent these type of things.







This year, in June, the same thing happened on the other side. Had a little less luck...bent the car front to back, in a concrete wall, up to the roof, at 100+km/h. Nothing too serious happened to me and I was wearing safety equipments. Scared the bejesus out of me though.





Fast forward, i've built another car, and been going to HPDE every week to get past the psychological fear of having a mechanical failure. The comfort came back slowly, but it did. Up until yesterday, where this happened :



Ok. Different chassis, different ride height, different hubs and knukles, brand new axles. This makes me get the knukle out of the equation. Clearly, this is a hub failure.

The only constant is BRAKES. I run TSX caliper on Civic non-Si knukles, with hawk DTC60 and VW Corrado rotors.

Do you think that the hub failure could be explained by the fact that they are not NEW (they're low mileage), too weak, and coupled with the brake torque creating premature failure of the hub itself ?

I need a solution. My season is over and i'll be back in spring only, but this cannot happen anymore. Seriously. I got lucky that I did not seriously injure myself yesterday. I loose the brake when it happens, as well as direction (it gets numb)...the noise is pretty intimidating and he car goes all over. I do not wish the feeling to anyone.

My solution as of yet goes like this : Get the cleanest Acura Integra (or Civic Si) knukles possible. Get 2 brand new hubs from Honda. Get 2 brand new bearings from Honda. Use 2 brand new non-Honda axles. Have everything pressed in smoothly. I'll run the ITR/CRV calipers, with redrilled 4x100 ITR rotors. Enjoy a hub-failure-free life ????????

To adress this from one of my older topic...these latest hubs were never removed, bearings were originals.


Help !

Patrick, who's feeling violated for having trusted his own car...and who would let it go for a few $ as of right now.

 

Damn, I can't add anything productive but that is some intense damage. I feel like a read a older post of you talking about breaking hubs.

When this happens is it during some heavy breaking? Thats the only think I could think of. Can't comment on the integrity of No Si civic hubs? (I would assume a million people have raced on them. I would lean towards the brake set up. Maybe some aspects of the rotors calipers are not balanced well and put undo stress on the system. You running slicks?

 

Only thing that comes to mind is over torqued? Or excessive use of a heavy impact gun. I always hand loosen and hand tighten my axles, than torque them. Seems as though you've eliminated quite a few parts as "failure parts". So something else has to be at play.

Good luck.

 

Same here, though I could really only see over torquing there causing the axle tip to shear rather than the hub. That's pretty crazy though. I'm not sure I've ever seen a honda hub do that even with heavy heavy track use and here you've had it happen 3 times. I'd consider all new hubs and bearing and possibly knuckles just to attempt to eliminate whatever the issue is. I can't think of much of any other way to trouble shoot that. You're not using some ridiculous offset or spacers are you?

 

Holy smokes thats too scarry.
Makes me think about the ankle bone is connect to the foot bone kind of thing.
SO correct me if im wrong but it looks like the hub and the rotor failed?
I have never seen this.

 

After staring at the pictures a little longer, I think the axle breaking is secondary and the hub is primary failure, along with the rotor being secondary. But for a hub to break like that is the real question. I don't see how. Unless when a bearing was previous installed it was damaged, or there was a harsh impact with the wheel on that deformed it ( but then you would have a wicked vibrration). How did it feel the few moments leading up to the failure? Was there quite a bit of vibration? Did the brakes perform like usual?

 

Thats a tough one to call.
Id lean more towards a weaker link than the knuckle.
rotor causing the failure?
IDK very tough one to speculate.
if only we could position cameras everywhere.

 

That is very odd. Where you braking when this happened?

I would go with the ITR calipers and 92 Honda Prelude VTEC DOHC rotors because they are hub centric.

But as for the hub breaking, that is just crazy to have 3!!! break.

I wouldn't even take age or rust into the occasion. Those hubs should be solid and looks like you're running an LS/B20 engine so can't be making that much power.

No idea. I would replace with brand new OEM honda hubs, bearings, and newer knuckles.

 

Hubs break on our cars, often. It comes with racing these things but it doesn't have to happen as often!

All you can do to prevent this is:

1: ONLY run the OEM stuff and change them every 1-2 seasons. My knuckles have seen 3 different sets of bearings and hubs and will see their 4th this off season.

2: Brake ducts. Just because you have big brakes and yada yada yada doesn't mean you've improved your hub/cv/bearing cooling. Think of Brake Ducting as "bearing/Hub"' ducting. Metal sheers more readily when very hot so help hit cool down.

3: Never re-use a hub. Think of a hub and bearing as a set. If you replace one, then you replace the other... period.

 

This is crazy, never seen anything like this.

After thinking about it for a while I can't see this being caused by braking force alone, for starters we'd all be snapping these like hot cakes and secondly there isn't any resistance from the hub aside from whatever the engine compression is supplying to the axle, which certainly isn't enough to sheer off the hub like this.

My guess is that it's something more complex with the way the brakes interact with the hub, be it some type of heat issue, or a harmonic issue.

Hopefully someone much more intelligent than I will chime in. Good luck!

 

I've seen a few 4-lug setups break like that. Never seen a 5-lug setup break. Honda probably put 5-lug on the ITR/GSR for a reason. Just saying.

 

They do that, my weak point is studs on the lude after a few seasons. It's just hard on everything, I run ARP studs now. We used to have a similar issue on another honda I ran, we just replaced things as they failed or ideally prematurely. There is HORRENDOUS strain with good tyres on a fwd car at those hubs, we broke a wheel once, no lead up, no signs just hard into the corner on a dry track then bouncing on some track ruts it snapped the wheel centre clean out leaving it bolted to the car and the bit with the tyre rolling into lap traffic. They weren't rotas or some **** either.

 

The OP does seem to have an inordinate number of failures. But the years of rust on the failed parts might be a clue? Are the bearings locking up, are you running junk yard wheel bearings?

 

Do you have to mod the caliper or caliper bracket so it sits centered? That is the only same part from the other car right....the caliper/bracket?

You obviously have some setup issue going, the rust on the hubs doesn't mean anything, any hub left on Canadian winter will look like this even with low use.

 

Change to ITR hubs with 5 spoke wheels and rotors. It just looks like you are putting too much force into the 4 spoke hubs with power and braking and cornering loads, and they are old/rusted and failing. I have been running my original ITR hubs and knuckles on track for over 13 years with zero failures of hubs or studs. I run about 300 WHP since 2007 and DTC-60/70 pads. My car has never been driven in the snow and it has no rust as shown in your pics. I have just changed the bearings and ball joints once last year, and had one axle fail at inner joint about 4 years ago, and that is it. I still have the original tie-rods, knuckles, hubs and studs. Car has done thousands of laps. I use NSX calipers and Legend GS rotors. Your TSX rotor diameter is quite bit larger than was intended for the 4 spoke hubs, and you are thus applying more torque to the hub from braking forces than it was originally designed for. Centre of pad must be a considerable % further out than for OEM rotors, and thus your moment/lever arm is longer. Are you also running bigger radius tires than OEM?

From what you describe it does not look like you are doing anything wrong, so I can just assume you are using parts outside of their design range. Like others said, Honda upgraded ITR to 5 spoke for a reason.

 

Acura integra hubs (4 lug) being the same part as 5 lug minus a lug...would this be as good ? I mean, the total shearing load on the hub is the same whether I have 4 or 5 lug...and since the studs aren't a problem here...my conclusion is that ITR or non-ITR would both be the same upgrade. Tell me if i'm wrong !

Going to 5 lug would really be a PITA considering the number of track wheels I own...chi-ching $$$$. But I will do it if that is all I need. Especially since i'll be buying new OEM hubs anyway, as the 5 lug fits non-ITR knukle.

Patrick...who seriously won't take ''it may happen sometime'' as a solution........

 

I'd look to the brakes as that's the main common factor between the two cars and not really a commonly used parts set in the Honda track car world.

 

I would imagine that this is correct, but again I'm not convinced, as it seems most everyone else is, that braking force alone is causing the failure. From what I reckon you'd have to have two very strong forces acting upon the hub in opposite directions to sheer it. Let's think of it this way, say for example that the hub is capable of withstanding a force of 10,000 ft-lbs before sheering in the manner yours have. Let's pretend for a minute that your brakes are capable of creating that amount of force in stopping power - you'd have to have that same amount of force working in the opposite direction on the inside of the hub for the part to sheer, and I'm not convinced that the driveline (axles> trans> clutch> engine compression) is capable of creating that much force, unless the engine spun a bearing or hydrolocked or seized somehow, which clearly yours didn't. Again maybe I'm totally wrong here, but I don't see how braking force alone could snap a hub, it seems more like a side load, heat or harmonic issue is causing the fracture to me.

 

Curious to know what is the outer diameter of ITR hubs where it goes into the bearing compared to other Honda hubs. And what about ITR hub bearing dimensions compared to other bearing dimensions? All I know is that mine have never broken. I am also not convinced it is from brakes, and much more likely from many, many side impacts fatiguing the part over time, along with rust. Use new hubs.

found this on another forum (Nissan G20) about hub failures (you can find many, including Corvettes, Spec Miata, Nissan, dodge, you name it) and it made some sense:

"Possibly not, but you've got to remember that a cast part usually has a grain structure which does not tolerate sharp impacts. In other words, the closer to the loading is to the fatigue limit of the part, it takes far less cycles than on something like a forged or machined part to cause the fatigue limit to drop quickly. So you don't have to necessarily hit it hard enough to cause cracking immediately, but if you managed to locally fatigue the metal on one part of the hub, all it takes is one crack to propagate around the whole piece."

Perhaps ITR hubs have better metallurgy, better casting grain structure, better alloy. Who knows?

 

I found this:

http://www.k20a.org/forum/showthread.php?t=37607

It looks like the OD on the hub for the ITR is the same (43mm) as other integras, and most civics.

 

Isn't braking force seen by the system somewhat limited by tire traction? Large rotors feel good for modulation, and help avoid heat soak problems, but overall, traction limits braking force on the system.

 

I wasn't saying the braking force itself was doing it but more something like a vibration or weak rotor, or poor fitment that's adding strain to some critical point or something. Anything could be adding stress to all the right (wrong) places.

 

i had the same failure after reusing old hubs with new bearings. happened on each side in consecutive weekends. so i learned the hard way to never reuse old hubs. i think its the stress of taking off the old race more than anything. its no coincidence they broke off nearly at the same time.

 

Good point to further repeat.

Also, always address heat in the braking system. Brakes make heat, heat causes failure in bearings and in hubs.

 

I could see this being more of an issue with lower offset wheels because of the extra force placed on the bearing and hub but they don't look like anything more than a +35 offset. Maybe the heat of the brakes? Something off balance? Who knows. It makes me think about buying new hubs when it comes time for new bearings though.