[trackbird]

Please welcome Hoosier Performance Engineering to frrax.com. A background in OEM engineering and a desire for better quality parts for our cars has created our latest supporting vendor. They have some neat stuff coming and I'll let them fill you in on all of the details. I should have website information soon, in the meantime you can reach them through the following email:

Inquiry@HoosierPE.com

Welcome aboard!!!

[HoosierPE]

Thanks for the feedback, Stan.

Relative to the shrink fit questions, I believe you can transfer torque through a shrink or press-fit assembly if done correctly. The crank pulleys on many engines, like the LS series, are a simple press-fit to drive all the accessories. They only key or dowel them when they run blowers. If you don't need to disassemble the joint, you should be able to make a joint tight enough to be essentially a single piece or permanent joint. On our first sample, we had a radius issue where the spindle head and the hole in the flange had interference and didn't let the head sit flat on the flange. So we thought we would try to press it apart and we did get it apart with about 20,000 lbs on a hydraulic press, way beyond the max side load of our cars. We did consider a inter-bearing solid spacer, or even a crush sleeve like a pinon might use, but figured with the right spindle and flange assembly, it wasn't needed. Plus, we can fine tune the preload with the current setup. There's now way the flange will move on the spindle. If the 4th Gen community really likes these and we get a bunch of orders/volume, we may look into a one piece forging, it just too expensive for the tooling at this point.

The pin/spindle has been case hardened in the two spots where the inner bearing races will rest. We followed the Timken recommendations for case hardness and depth. One reason our parts were late from the shop is that they had to machine extra parts for the heat treat shop to section and check the case depth. The flange has also been case hardened in the shoulder area that the seal runs on. Also required per Timken recommendations for seal life and so that the seal doesn't grove the flange's shoulder. We only wanted the head of the pin zinc coated and just the exterior of the housing. The platting shop did take the time to mask those parts, but we are having them quote the masking. I'd like to keep the zinc out of the internal parts to make sure we don't create any flakes to contaminate.

I may take you up on the bearing life calculation if you can run them as pairs. The only thing we could get free online was for single bearings which makes determining the individual loading a bit difficult. I know they have programs that will run them as pairs, just don't have that access right now. Like you, I am confident that these will be the last bearings anyone has to purchase for their 4th Gen. I'll send you the details.