I went with THE GMR floater.

How many miles and races?

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Im going to keep this short because I do not want to thread hi-jack but here is one of our clients with well over 60 hard autocross runs and thousands of miles on the GMR setup. :)

http://www.pro-touring.com/showthrea...218#post875218

for any further questions please PM me, I dont want to step on any toes around here. Thanks

Sorry for the hi-jack. Carry on! :thumbsup:

Jason

Yep, when I woke up this morning my goal was to tarnish a company I know nothing about. If you don't understand the reasoning for REAL WORLD TESTING, your opinion isn't worth the internet space it just took up. What is your opinion based on their pal? Your engineering degree at Wal Mart or seat time?

Always a kid in the crowd that hates.....when I was youger it was a kid that rode a "Huffy", I then sported a Diamondback for it's strength/lightness. He raced at the local BMX track all the time and had a superioriority complex, he finally showed to the track a bunch of us kids had built out in the desert....well to make a long story short..... his bike broke and he never saw anything but the back of our mullets! Go figure....with all that official track experience and all? Hey.... you did'nt happen to ride a Huffy as a kid did you? ;)

Proof is what I'm looking for, good to hear it's real world experience.

I rode a schwinn with a banana seat and still smoked your ass. :lol:

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JMO, much respect to Jason for his ingenuity, design and commitment to bring it to market. Seriously. Donnie's a madman - check out his pic of the entire housing being turned down on the lathe - Badride is a committed customer and I admire that as well.

You OTHO make claims above that really need to be substantiated in my mind. I'm not sure it's the 'lightest' on the market, it's not proven the existing options are marginal, and it certainly is not the cheapest...just ask Dust off Steve on that one. BTW, what exactly are the 'inherent problems associated with semi-floater design'??

One of the things buyers in today's market look for is extensive R&D, longevity of the vendor and a proven design that offers advantages over other options. I like Jason (alot) and hope that his product/company is successful and proves to be a market leader, but one thing I'm looking for is a bit more real world testing and will not buy based on your opinions presented as fact. I do hope your assumptions prove to be correct and I'll get in line for one of Jason's kits. :cheers:

Jason, I've also been following your stuff and you seem like a stand up guy and very professional. Best of luck with your products.

That being said, some of your "followers" on here and on PT are not doing you much justice with many of their posts and attitudes. :rolleyes:

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Opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.... When I read a post by someone I always say to myself.... How many cars has this guy/gal built... How long have they been doing this? What's their real life experience? Something they read on the internet or have they actually done "whatever".

I remember when my kids where taking martial arts classes... the sensi used to tell them - "when you want to know something - should you ask your parents? Your Teacher? Your Grandparents? Or should you ask your buddy that's in the same class you are"?

I'll use Todd as a model -- he was having knock back issues -- he was actually running the crap out of his car -- he was trying various "fixes" -- and testing those fixes... and reporting the results. That's not an opinion - that's real world knowledge. I listened because he was in the fight.

For me it's about asking questions that have been formed from experience in hopes that a less experienced member won't buy an inferior part. We've all seen the sales pitch and parts that don't deliver. People around here are getting more knowledgable and demanding parts that are actually tried and true due to these questions. It's a great thing moving forward for the hobby.

I looked at the GMR set up and it looks damn nice. We have multiple options that weren't available a year ago. Time will tell which rises to the top and proves reliable in this venue. I still like the ZR1 hub set up even though it's not a floater.

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JSM...are you Badride? If so, did you move out of Cali? If not, you two would get along great...:lol:

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Thanks for the kind words Baddride. Post up some pics of your Nova so guys here know what you're about.

Posts on the net, or in texts for that matter, do not always convey tone or intent as they would when a couple dudes are throwing a couple back and bench racing. As I said before, you are a committed customer (I think, no ownership interest or shilling right?) and that is a good thing. You also have alot of knowledge about Jason's product and floaters in general. I think to avoid a repeat of the thread on PT, show what you know and why you think it's a superior product. Don't get your feathers ruffled if anyone disagrees - parts is parts, right? - and you'll win some over here.

I like you dude. Tell Jason I said hi, and welcome to Lat-G! :cheers:

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I think you misread my post about experience rather than opinions.... Read it again with a little less bias on your part and see if you don't come away with a different 'opinion'.

You'll find LAT G quite different than Pro Touring - discussions are civil - informed - and usually come from experience rather than just "my opinion 'cause I read somewhere in the internet". This is no place for flamers - they get run out of here in one day - or one post. I've read 1000's of posts on here and 99.9% are just great general discussions without "tones" or "flames" or anything like that.


:lateral: :cheers:

It's a fixed sealed bearing hub that is bolted to the axle housing. The axle is affixed with a nut. It's not really a floating axle like a conventional floater.

We are a great group of guys, we just don't take any crap. :thumbsup: You shoudl come out to the pro touring events. They are a blast.

Todd you are correct in your statement about the ZR1 hub, the axle IS bolted to the hub cap,it is not the same set up as a factory Corvette which uses the large 32mm nut. It is simply a socket head cap screw to help more with the install of the axle. a normal floater uses a cap to retain the axle basically the same principal. The Speedtech/Chicane set up also uses in inner axle seal so the tubes are Dry, no gear oil in the axle tubes. makes things alot cleaner when servicing. also the Hub is a sealed unit as you would know so no maintaince required there either.
So it really is Technically not a floating avle BUT due to the fact that the Wheel Mounting Surface does not move with the axle and is fixed there is no caliper knock back issues.

Blake,

Be very cautious with the axle tube seals. We lost a 3rd member in the race car using these. We tried several brands of seal and even a couple different types of axles. All sized properly, but in the end all they ended up doing was trapping the lube in the tube once it got past the seal and didn't allow it to get back into the sump. I had multiple conversations with people and found a lot of similar feed back. Obviously since my application was circle track the right axle tube was the culprit. I'm not sure you will see this in the Pro-Touring/Track Day venue, but it is worth looking into. I would hate to see you deal with come backs over burned up gear sets! In the end we just ran a slightly higher oil level in the rear and made sure we had good o-rings on the hub seals. Never had an issue after that. (Obviously this was a standard design floater) All in all it was about a $2K lesson between broken parts and test pieces trying to solve the problem. Hope this helps some. :cheers:

good feed back. this is not something i had heard of. but i have to now check with Speedway Engineering on this. i would think that Kenny know if the NASCAR guys are having problems or not. he told me yesterday they had something like 40 rear ends to build for Daytona :willy: :willy:

i will call and post up the response. it is an easy thing to delete if it may cause a problem.

stay tuned

Sounds good, and I will be the first to respect that since I am the same way. I will be out and about soon, thanks for the kind invite and look forward to meeting you personally as we may be more alike then we would probably admit currently. Oh, and sorry about the banana seat comment!:thumbsup:

They should certainly be able to help. We tried seals from Allstar (Motorstate), Afco, and Speedway. We also tried standard floater axles as well as GN axles. We also tried GN Seals with standard axles thinking they would be tighter, but couldn't put it together. Obviously gun drilled won't work :lol: . I'll be anxious to hear your feedback. It would definitely be the way to go if you can be successful! :cheers:

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Spoke to Speedway they Normally do run a inner axle seal including snap rings on both sides of the seal on all the NASCAR housings. That being said he has not seen any failures since 1993 when they changed to a different type of diaphram seal. BUT did say that is would be possible if the housing was bent or "rubbed" as the seal is quite delicate and also can be damaged during assembly if the axles being used do not have a large enough taper on them. that is the official answer.
Also the housing has axle seals at the housing ends. so the inner would not be required.

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when I road race, i always re pack the bearings and clean the tubes after each race weekend, which is 4 -30 min sessions for practice and qual, and 2 35-45 min races. I always have some oil in the the tubes(with inner seals,which we silicon as well). Never had any bearing issues etc, we also ran our fluid level high but found it to get by the seals and start to wash the bearings out, in sprint races (under an hr) generally with a rear end cooler, you can keep 2.5-4 qts plenty cool.
A floater will absolutely stop knock back, HOWEVER, the rear end has to be straight, we do all our welding with a jig(and a certain procedure) and still get run out to .200-.300 thou, we then heat and squelch till we have under .008. Now once you have a straight housing, now you space your caliper correct and you will have NO knock back.
Most of the time complaints on caliper knock back with a full floater is, either axle run out, or a caliper not spaced properly on rotor.
Now when you get into hard track day, time trial etc use you will now get the rotors so hot the heat gets into the calipers and boils or starts to boil the fluid, which will give you a spongy knock back feeling pedal, now add cooling.
It all adds up to going fast, generally on a protouring car with a d.o.t tire you wont get the brakes hot enough to do this unless you have really cheap brake fluid or race compound pads.
we use gun drilled axles

the zr-1 set up looks nice.

^ Tech we can use. Thx for adding to the discussion Jake. Can you comment on the brand/design you're using, how many splines on the axles and if you see any difference in side loads in a floater set up for AutoX vs Roadrace (besides the hotter fluid mentioned above)?

I'm digging everyone's input here. As Todd said, floaters in the PT world are really in it's infancy. I bet there's alot more to be learned from real world use.

we have not discussed the gun drilling much as of yet, the avle would have to be drilled short ( so the retaining bolt has material ) so that would have to be a blind hole.
the cap on the hub end IS sealed.

there was a comment about camber / toe settings being an option, there have been talks about that as an option and Chicane and SKF are running some numbers to see if a ball end axle can be used to any extended service life. More on this as we get more information.

I think Jake is on to something with the run out. In fact that is something I have been concerned with on here for years. I see people buy axle housings and then weld brackets to them. Guaranteed they are running out excessively afterword unless they follow a procedure similar to the one Jake mentioned. That's another topic all together. The way I can see this working and what you mention Blake about Speedway using snap rings helps substantiate my theory. If when the housing is being constructed, you machined a seat for the seal on the inside of the tube that was concentric with the carrier bearings and hub bearings than you could ensure a good fit. When we were using them, they were sold as lip seals to press in the end of the 3" axle tube with no machining. The tubing is typically DOM, but I'm not sure what the mfg. tolerances are with regard to wall thickness and ID/OD concentricity. In any case, I think runout was definitely an issue. All of our housings were jig built and straightened, but maybe not close enough. It sounds like Speedway is machining the ID on the NASCAR stuff since they are using snap rings. The amount of compliance in the seal will help a lot too. You'll get it handled Blake. Good luck with the product! :cheers:

ordering one tomorrow for my Nova to have in for RTTC. and let the beating begin. :thumbsup:

PARKING BRAKE? I don't need no stinking parking brake!

But seriously, I have two options in mind. 1. Is to use a pinion mount park brake from Speedway Motors for $299. 2. Wilwood makes a puck style mechanical spot caliper which (just so happens) is the same caliper that is used for option 1. but I would mount a pair of them on the rear rotors at about the 3 o-clock position. I would just need to fabricate mounts for them, then Inline Tube can make custom cables which would connect to the factory PB cable system.

I suspect as floating hubs gain acceptance in the PT world manufactures will step up and provide the pieces I had to fabricate. Time will tell.

The rotors are Wilwood 160-8508 and 160-8509 GT series which are 13"dia x 1.1" thick with a 12on7" bolt circle. I did not want drilled rotors.

My 9" was ordered from Moser with 57" WMS to WMS. My rear Forgelines are 18x12 with a 5.5" bs.

BTW, if anyone is curious, I purchased a freshly rebuilt surplus NASCAR center section from Roush Fenway racing in a 3.64 ratio with polished ring and pinion for $850. One thing about this center section is that it is setup with -8AN fittings if I decide to install a rear end cooler at a later date.

Just thinking out loud here -- but wouldn't "what works in NASCAR" come with some caveats? --- as in --- don't you think they rework and inspect just about every aspect of these cars after every race? So while the seals might be "fine" for NASCAR -- 500 miles isn't that big of a deal if they're being replaced all the time...

I don't know if they do that - but just saying that what might work on a NASCAR might not be so "user friendly" for our PT cars.

Thank you to all of those who have posted thus far to this thread.

As the original poster, I should clarify a few things about what I was/am after. Understanding that knockback is a real issue that several folks I know have and are personally dealing with, I want to know if they had to do it over again, would they have choosen to go with a floater setup--this begs the question, which one and why.

Now, I do value opinions, and I should also say that I tend to place greater value on that individual's opinion that has actually used the product in the manner that I am going to use it and can provide me actual feedback, specifically that it works and has worked for XXXX amount of time. Some of you have outstanding technical and scientific abilities in which you can compute load on the face of a bearing and have it expressed as a percentage, build a 1.21 jigawatt flux capaciter, etc., which I know is also valuable information and makes appropriate points to lend solid credability to the various products out there. Those points are well made and actually help me feel better about making a purchase of those specific products as well. I don't have those same talents in every area and rely on this site and you industrial mega minds to help fill me in. (No comments about my personal abilities from the peanut gallery are necessary on this point.)

In the end, for me, I want to know the part works ---and works for my intended application, which in my case is lots of street miles (trips of 400 to 600 miles at a time), track days, auto crossing (peanut and large tracks). Additionally, do I have to give up the center caps on my wheels? This may not seem like a big deal to some, but to me, I would be bummed out to have to give up those up. Small thing I know, but it's an individual thing.

This is why I value and have valued the opinions of guys like Todd, Dave, Chad, Payton, James, and others like them that can and will chime in. They are out at the tracks, have hit the streets and have used their cars, generally speaking in a similar fashion. I would hate to purchase one, find out they make some crazy noise at crusing RPM's, or require maintence every 5k, etc. It's my comfort level in assessing the next purchase--kinda like investing 401, after you have excess income, what is the best approach to take when wasting it on a car---my response, careful and thoughtful wasting by asking others who have wasted it before me if it was worth it.

Thanks again to all who have posted as I believe it will help others considering this same purchase as well. It appears we are well represented on this topic. I would hope that one of the mags would cover this topic in depth with some real world testing (Rupp, job opportunity--you can quit building motors and switch to floaters----GMR, Baer, Speedtech, Speedway--put them all on BP this year and give us feedback--there's got to be a story in that).

Doug BW Fresh