Affordable hub stands from Flyin' Miata

Figured this one would be just the sort of thing that GRMers like. Hub stands that don't cost thousands of dollars!

Basically, bolt these on in place of your wheels and you can adjust your suspension when it's loaded. Makes cornerweighting and ride height adjustment easy. They give your suspension full freedom to move so there's no side loading adding fuzz in your numbers.

They're also great for home alignments. No need to putz around with string, just measure toe off the toe bars and take camber right off the hub plates. Heck, if you align your car 4 times, they'll probably pay for themselves - never mind the convenience aspect.

We worked with Mark at Paco Motorsports to design these to be easy to use and affordable. They have four ball transits on the bottom, allowing them to smoothly slide in any direction. The hub plate is hinged to allow for a range of camber. They also include a steel plate to allow the stand a smooth surface to roll on as well as a thrust gauge to set your thrust angle.

They fit any car with a bolt pattern of 4x100 or 5x114.3 and a hub size of 67.1mm or less - which happens to cover every Miata as well as a whole bunch of others. They're $395/pair including the bottom plates and a thrust gauge. You can do your own alignment with a set of two, but you'll need four of them if you want to do cornerweighting.

To check your camber angle, you can use any angle gauge. We'll have a digital one available soon for $35. You can also use your iPhone with the free iHandy Level app.

FM hub stands

Wow. With the "4x100 and 4x114.5" tidbit, this went from a "neat" to a "I have to have these." They'll fit and help me align any of vehicles except the Volvo.

How bad of an idea would using wheel adapters and these stands be? (So I could use them with the Volvo, which is 5x108)

Also, how strict is the weight limit, do you think? The GS's curb weight is around 3700 pounds so that's pretty dang close to the rating. And I imagine that it's front end biased, too.

This is very cool.

That's a 5x114.3, not 4x114.3. More bolt patterns will be coming, though. 4x114.3 is one of the obvious ones to add. You can pull the pin for the hub plate and swap a new one in for a different set of bolt patterns.

Here's a question for the GRM collective: what patterns would you like to see on these? This is not a request to name the most obscure bolt pattern you can think of Seriously, for these to be useful for you, what do they need to fit? Also, if the hub diameter is larger than 67.1, how big is it?

I don't see any problem with using wheel adapters at all. That's not going to affect the alignment. I'm not the one who came up with the load ratings, I suspect they're based on the ratings of the ball transits.

I'd just want to see 4x100, 5x114.3, and 5x100.

I'm sure 4x114.3 will come up, as will 4x108, 5x120, and whatever weird stuff came out of germany.

I don't think i have anything larger than a 67.1...

Did you send me an email this weekend? I got a request for that exact combo - 5x100 plus the other two...

Yeah... I'd love a set, but I've got 8 cars with 8 different bolt patterns.

4x100, 4x114, 4x130, 5x100 are the four I'd likely check suspension/corner weights on. I haven't the foggiest idea what hub diameters though.

Keith Tanner wrote: Did you send me an email this weekend? I got a request for that exact combo - 5x100 plus the other two...

Nope. I sold my 5x100 car last week, but i'll be buying another one in a couple years. I do need to call in and talk to Jeremy at some point, though...

I'm assuming that 67.1" hub is on the big end of things, right? I think that's what the MX6/FD RX7 has. Miata is substantially smaller, yes?

4x114.3 is most Nissan/Infiniti stuff, fairly popular.

These look pretty cool.

John, what's got a 4x130 pattern? Porsche 914?

4x114.3 is pretty much a given, I think. It's one of the few things that an MGB and a Mustang share

67.1mm is fairly large. That's RX8/NC Miata. I suspect the FD would be the same. We'll very likely have separate hub plates available in the future, Mark is currently coming up with pricing on those. The hub plate is our name for the white part that bolts on to the hub itself, attached to the base with a pin.

Mark has confirmed that the 1000 lb load limit comes from the ball transits on the bottom. I don't know how much margin is built into those.

*starts thinking about how hard it would be to modify existing harbor freight jackstands into these for 1/10th of the cost.. hmm.....

Have at it! The ball transits are a bit shocking in price, that's going to blow your budget right there. McMaster Carr sells transits with a 250 lb rating (the rating these have) for a minimum of $13.23 each, and you need four per stand. That's $105.84 for a pair of stands. For the transits alone! They're pretty critical to the way the stands work though.

The rest is just cutting, bending and welding and making sure that everything stays straight when you do.

Ball TRANSFER. I keep calling them transits, I don't know why.

andrave wrote: *starts thinking about how hard it would be to modify existing harbor freight jackstands into these for 1/10th of the cost.. hmm.....

You may be able to make these work for you:

http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Caster-Style-Round-Capacity/dp/B002IDSWUW/ref=sr_1_2?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1358208174&sr=1-2&keywords=ball+transfer+250lbs

$8 each, 250lb capacity. A little tall, but the desc. says they can be used inverted as a ball transfer so if you can design your plate to recess them cheaply... $32/stand. Or, you could buy $41 10 packs of the 100lb ones and use as many as you need to carry the load.

EDIT: Omnitrack has nice lower profile push fit with snap rings that hold 400lbs for $14.41 http://www.omnitrack.us/index2.php?cPath=145

I'll be watching this closely to see what other sizes pop up. I think it would totally be worth it just for the 4x100, but 5x130 is in my future as well. Nice looking product.

I would suggest 5x130, not because Porsches are abundant, but because a high percentage of them find their way to the track and a lot of owners would be inclined to spring for a set of these things.

Very cool!

those would be awesome ... to bad I've a slopping gravel drive and parking area

You could get away with the gravel by using the steel plates under the stands, but the sloping part is a major difficulty! The car will seek the center of the earth.

Good point, Woody. Ooo, and those of you who know Spec Miata racers, tell 'em about these.

Keith Tanner wrote: You could get away with the gravel by using the steel plates under the stands, but the sloping part is a major difficulty! The car will seek the center of the earth. Good point, Woody. Ooo, and those of you who know Spec Miata racers, tell 'em about these.

I have the "too many different hubs" issue here too. They are reasonably priced but I would have to modify them to allow fast, affordable adaptation. It wouldn't be very hard to change the design to allow that piece to be swapped and then drill a few patterns on the same face so you don't need to have one for each car but maybe 3 total. 5x130 and 4x100 fit the same one. 5x120 is close enough to do BMW and GM if you make the holes a hair larger, etc...

It already is possible to swap in different hub plates. Remove the toe plate, pull a pin, remove the rod the plate pivots on, reassemble, voila.

It already has two bolt patterns on it - 4x100 and 5x114.3. I suspect we may end up with one plate with three 4-bolt patterns and one with three 5-bolt patterns. Mark's working on the layouts.

Keith Tanner wrote: It already is possible to swap in different hub plates. Remove the toe plate, pull a pin, remove the rod the plate pivots on, reassemble, voila. It already has two bolt patterns on it - 4x100 and 5x114.3. I suspect we may end up with one plate with three 4-bolt patterns and one with three 5-bolt patterns. Mark's working on the layouts.

Cool. 5x120, 5x130, 4x100 please and I'll add it to my birfday wishlist. beats the hell out of the way I do it now with the scales on top of 4 home made tables with leveler feet and grease between two plates of aluminum siding.

the bolt pattern would be easy enough to drill out yourself if you had a rotor you could lay over. not like it needs to be centered exactly, its not going to be spinning at 100 mph.. just sitting on it.

Keith Tanner wrote: That's a 5x114.3, not 4x114.3. More bolt patterns will be coming, though. 4x114.3 is one of the obvious ones to add.

Tom Celica might need these of 4x114.3 come to be. All the old rear drive Toyotas are 4x114.3.

Keith Tanner wrote: Ball TRANSFER. I keep calling them transits, I don't know why.

I had a ton of those things from the cargo hold of an airliner and tried to make them work as car dollies. You need a really smooth surface for them to roll well, and a smooth concrete garage floor isn't it!

Off topic, those Wilwood calipers have dust boots or no? Any drawbacks you've encountered if not?