I might be onto something, need time to research and test this out unless someone here already figured it out.
The late C4 corvette guys figured out that our 4th gen fbody hubs bolt up to their spindles, and some of them have had extremely good fortune with the SKF 4th gen hubs (part # BR930186) compared to the other brands, including the Timkens some of us run and repeatedly warranty at Autozone
; we're talking claims of entire seasons on big grippy tires and still no play in the hubs; these guys were having the same longevity issues we had with the other brands of hubs.
By chance I found a guy on ebay that had a few "new old stock" SKF hubs for fairly cheap, but I didn't get them with their original SKF boxes, and the hubs don't have SKF markings on them, just the markings of a Korean manufacturer called ILJIN. I've ordered other SKF parts (seals, pilot bearings, etc), that don't bear SKF marks so this doesn't bother me.
Things I have heard but need to research/verify:
1. SKF makes these particular hubs in Korea
2. Some research shows ILJIN of Korea ships a ton of crap to SKF USA
3. The "premium" line of NAPA hubs are in fact just SKF hubs
I intend on taking my hubs to the NAPA store to see if they match what I have right now; so far all known pictures of the SKF 4th gen hubs show them to be unique compared to the shape/color/design of all of the other 4th gen hub offerings, and importantly, match the two hubs I bought very closely.
From there I'm going to temporarily replace my Timkens with these hubs and see how long they last. If this experiment fails I'm out $110 and I'm back to warrantying out Timkens until I pony up the $$$ to get the nice setup; felt it was worth the gamble.
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