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In light of this thread I just checked out last shipment of hubs. Out of 6 hubs we received 3 boxes that were made in Japan and 3 made in the USA.
Made in Japan hubs were assembled in 2015 and are correct:
Made in USA hubs were assembled in mid 2016 and are not good...now being exchanged. I also noticed the made in USA hubs have bearings which are not stamped.
Last edited by Lincoln Logs; 10-07-2016 at 03:09 PM.
Safari on a mac won't render them. I loaded the page source and pulled down the images, they appear to be 'RIFF' files, which is some proprietary Windows format with god-only-knows what embedded in it.
Finally got the run down from some folks at Centric/Stoptech. NTN Japan only does ONE production run per year of the OEM hubs that are correctly machined on the back (likely who Timken was sourcing from as well). Centric ran out of stock on the NTN sourced hubs this year and switched to Timken as a substitute supplier which is why there was a change in between batches. It is very likely Timken is sourcing their latest batch of hubs from someone else as well. It will be at least a few months before the correct hubs will hit market again but the good news is the folks at Centric are contacting them now and making them aware of the failure point to avoid this in future batches.
You guys just forced me to pop into my hub repack thread and grab a pic:
Well, I can breathe easier.
I added a link to this thread, but its all the way at the end. My thread is from 2013 and I can't edit it so I've requested mod assist for an edit. The more places we can get this information out the better!