May 1, 2013 - So, what caused the accident?
The hub came apart, leaving only the brake rotor to hold the wheel on. Of course, that ripped apart almost instantly and the car snapped into a spin.
It turns out that this was a known problem with the V8Roadsters hubs, which led to a redesign several years ago. The new one is 1/2" thick instead of the 3/8" found in the older design. In the fallout from my broken axle last month and some problems found with new parts, I ended up borrowing the hubs from FM's shop car, Elvis. For some reason, Elvis never got the upgraded parts. I'm going to try to figure out how that fell through the cracks. We're also going to contact all of Flyin' Miata's V8 customers and ask them to check their rear hub thickness to make sure there aren't any more out there.
The good news is that we now have proof that the rear caliper brackets on the new FM brake setup are stronger than the rotors!
tags: failure, hubs |
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