[Mike harris]

So during the lockdown been thinking of ways to be able to stop my rear drive flanges coming undone on my fully float kit

I quite often sheer of the 6 bolts.

So I've found these grand vitara/tracker or xl7 Hubs. Look how much meat there is where the drive flange seats

If the fit the samurai splindle you could double bolt the flange

So question is will they work? It looks to have a console bearing setup, with the seal attached to the spindle and not in the hub? I'm only basing this of terrible pictures of the internet. Anyone know much about these? Internal bearing size would be interesting to know. Here's some pics....

[Gwagensteve]

You’ll need the XL7 spindle as well as a unit. The XL7 hub won’t suit the Sierra spindle.

[Mike harris]

Morning dude,

Ok cool, is the spindle 4 bolt design? Don't suppose you know if bolt pattern is the same?

Problem is now I'd have to hope that it's no longer as I've had my shafts made to original samurai hub dimensions !

Mike

[Gwagensteve]

No idea but vitara is different and also shorter, so your axles would end up too long.

[Mike harris]

Ok man no worries, il buy one just to take a look only a few quid from a breaker

Need to stop these flanges coming undone !

[Gwagensteve]

Gregc has run Nord-Lock washers for ~10 days or so of hard driving and they haven't backed off at all, and there's been zero movement of the flange. (they're marked with marker pen as a telltale, and as you'd know, you can see when the flange starts to walk on the bolts anyway)

If you had to make new spindle adapter plates to suit the GV hubs you might as well step up to a hub with enough axle spline for the job, like toyota, then you could go to 10mm bolts anyway.

[Mike harris]

Il give them ago then, thanks mate

[jez]

Hello Mike, It may have already been covered and missed by me, But could you not drill the the hub and flange between bolt fixings and have dowel pins inserted to the hub for the flange to locate onto, Just a thought.

[Gwagensteve]

The hub has rebates between the bolts that prevent this.

However, as I've discussed before, dowels aren't the answer. if the bolts or dowels are placed in shear, the connection has already failed. It is the friction between the hub and drive flange created by the bolt tension that creates the connection. Bigger/more bolts equals more tension.