I talked with EFI Logics this morning and their MR which weighs near 3200lbs has run 3 seasons as well as a 3 hour endurance race with no problems except they did wear out a rear wheel bearing. That's running 275 Hoosiers. No problem with the hubs. In Australia Evolutions run the 12 hours of Bathurst (on performance street compounds). I will contact my buddy in Australia and ask him if he knows of any issues with the teams. My car is a 2003 with many events and 12 super touring races with no apparent problem. Whether magnafluxing is required has never surfaced till this conversation.

 

just in case, its a good idea to have a spare hub. in rally they are usually wear out quickly. I dont think its that dramatic,
im not saying in 2 hours but its a known issue.

 

As far as the rear bearings going out it is due to a couple things. When my car handled more like a stock evo with push, the front bearings were the ones that I had to replace most often. Once i was able to get the rear of the car rotating nearly as much as a rwd car, it put lots of additional pressure on the rear bearings. I would have to replace the left rear every 3-4 races as Eric was saying. The only broken hub issue I had was at Road America-We have it down to a few factors, one being the very rough curbing at RA followed by the track surface that made the car kinda hop as the rear was sliding around. Finally, I was running on A compound tires that have a lot of grip so with the hopping and grip release grip action, it was eventually too much for the hub to take. I will make some suspension changes with Bryan@JRZ to ensure no hopping this year

As for endurance races, id change the bearings prior to each race just to be sure and Id be concerned about how much heat that turbo was dealing with.

Ive driven endurance races and 1.5 hours stints really are not as bad as you think but I wouldnt want to go any longer than that.

Marty

 

Holy cow! I didn't realize it was that bad.

Oddly enough, I see plenty of Evos at track days (I haven't tracked mine yet) and they seem to do fine. But I think most are running street rubber and not Hoosiers.

I guess I better stick to a CRX for next season.

 

i think those failures on the rear comes up when you change the rear dif and use aggressive tire sizes etc.
If you dont go so far out from the factory set up, like an open class car, you will be fine.

 

What concerns me is that the relatively stock T2 cars (like Marty's) are having these problems. Granted, T2 cars are rolling on race rubber but 3-4 weekends per set of hubs is not too good.

Anyway, CRX and Miata body panels are much cheaper than for an Evo. Luckily, Miatas NEVER hit each other on the track.

 

If you guys watch Marty's video of the break you'll see what he means. It looks as though he's driving 12/10th's just to stay out front, with bouncing, on the bare edge of adheasion, and would have won. When you drive ANY car that hard for any length of time, you ARE going to break things. Unfortunally with our setups, the load, AWD, weight transfer, how it handles etc etc the Hubs are a focal point for all the pressure and abuse. So instead of getting scared away, we should get a shop to make us some aftermarket options! Enough intake manifolds and carbon hoods to choke a donkey, lets keep inovating and make some real world parts.

 

Marty or Eric,
Could I get one of you to ship me a broken hub so I can get it analyzed?

 

Sure I have it at the shop.