[Ron Sutton]

Hey Lance,

You are correct in that the cause of your bearing failures is because you now have more grip ... which loads everything more. You have a common goal (floaters) & challenge (already have a housing in the car). I do this often utilizing Speedway Engineering. We take a guy's existing housing with all of their suspension brackets already welded in the correct place ... ship it to Speedway ... and weld on Mod-Lite floater ends.

When I am involved, I almost always move the face of the hubs 1/2" inward on both sides ... so we can utilize wheel spacers as a tuning tool. So ... hypothetically, if your current 9" Ford rear end is 60" WMS-to-WMS ... we make it 59" ... and use spacers to fine tune placement of the rear track width for handling purposes. This is not mandatory ... just an option that only adds what the spacers cost.

On the packages I do for Pro Touring, Autocross & Track Cars ... like Greg Weld's Mustang ... we typically use Mod-Lite aluminum floater hubs in any common pattern 5x5.0", 5x4.75" or 5x4.50". The studs can be 1/2" or 5/8". You can't use the NASCAR style 5/8" lug nuts easily. They all have a 45° conical seat & the outer hex is huge at 1". Even if you changed the taper of your wheel lug bores (not recommended) ... the socket that fits over 1" lug nuts doesn't fit into the lug nut bores of most aluminum wheels. I highly recommend the 5/8" fine thread studs & use special road race lug nuts I've found that have a 60° conical seat for aluminum wheels & only a 7/8" hex size so common sockets fit into the typically tight lug nut bores.

For race cars only ... we'll run aluminum drive plates. For Pro Touring, Autocross & Track Cars we only run steel drive plates. For those not familiar ... drive plates attach to the outer hubs & are splined. The axles are splined (differently) on both ends. The drive plate is what connects the outer splined part of the axle to the hubs to "drive" the wheels. For high power (600HP +) applications I prefer the thick Grand Nation drive plates ... but the centric hub is 3.06" and requires wheels with a 3.09" centric bore. No problem when ordering new wheels. When guys already have wheels & can't or don't want to bore the centers, we use the Mod-Lite steel drive plates that have a 2.75" centric hub & fits wheels with 2.77" & larger centric bores.

Speedway can weld on "common" race brake caliper mounts during the process. But if you want to run your Ford Explorer rear brakes, we'll need to send them along with the housing or you'll need to weld on the brackets yourself when it returns. Do those Ford Explorer rear brakes use rotors with a built in hat that slips over the studs?