El Cheapo, crapity crap hub assemblies...
 

Anyone use the:
"Power Stop"
"WJB"
"GMB"
"Centric"
....or any of the ROCK AUTO $30-$50 rear hub assemblies? And if you have used them, any outright quality issues or problems? I'm thinking about Cheapy-Cheaps for the Kart, thinking less weight = less stress, a cheaper one should work O.K. for a while.

I have a set of el cheapo hubs on my car.
I bought them early on while i was troubleshooting some vibration in the rear end.
I figured i would run them for a year or so and replace them.

I think I'm at like 3years and 30k miles, all is still going well.

For my truck i found the el cheapo hubs suck and fail quickly... maybe i just got lucky with the vette.

Copy that. Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to try 'em.

IIRC I actually got moog fo $35 on ebay.

Might have been just moog boxes, but if actually moog you done good!

^X2

I got 'em coming. $32 specials.

Can’t speak for rear hubs, but I’m running a centric front hub on the passenger side and so far so good. I also used el cheapo hubs on my wife’s old Nissan Quest several years back. I put them on at around 100k miles thinking we’d trade it in soon, and we ended up driving it another 50k and they were still fine when we finally got rid of the van.

I put a set of Ebay no name hubs on the front of my 1998 Mustang GT about a year ago.... bearings were totally shot in the factory ones that were still on the car.... Drove it about another 6 months as a daily with no issue before I sold it...

I have centric hubs on the front of my truck and one of the rear hubs on the Vette. IIRC I have around 80K on the truck hubs and about 10K on the Vette. I have not had any issues with either of them so far.

These are good reports. Thanks for the input!

Real. Just bought some for my Wife's car and were less than half the price of brick and mortar stores and life time warranty.

I really don't think it matters anymore. There are no American-made hubs available for our cars anymore. They're all made in China. So the brand on the box may be meaningless. The only good solution is to get an adapter kit and use SKF X-tracker hubs, but that's $1000.

I don't think MADE IN USA really makes the difference. The company tells the factory what quality to make. The paradigm has shifted from durable stuff to "Cheap Today" stuff. Weren't "Government Motors" a joke before the govt bailed them out?

Sure they do. The question is: Do they always do what they're told? Remember who you're talking about here...CHINA. Since when do the Chinese do ANYTHING they're told??

Buy Chinese parts and roll the dice....

Ah, I see. So if you hired me and I didn't do what I was told, what should YOU do? You wanna be boss and hire me, you take responsibility for me. It is that simple. That you refuse to fire me means you condone what I am doing. You don't get to say "Oh, it was the idiot worker who screwed it up." and take the cash. Not that easy to be boss, is it?

The problem with the severe lack of quality control on Chinese made parts is much larger than your "one employee" scenario. If American companies choose to ignore the quality of their products that they have decided to produce there, then that's completely on them...and if they don't act to correct the issue by whatever means is necessary, then they will suffer.

I have had MANY more problems with the quality of Chinese made parts and products than I ever have American made parts and products. Maybe your experiences are different.

I still stand by my final sentence in my last post: Buy Chinese parts and roll the dice. Maybe you'll get lucky and get a good part...and maybe you won't. On a critical part such as a hub assembly, is it worth the gamble??

Red I agree with you but I could not find an American made hub. Finally pulled the trigger on some Timken's hoping, and sure enough they were marked made in China. So you hope as aklim says they build to the specs sent to them by Timken.

And thats the real problem.... There are very few American made choices for anything anymore.... Americans always want the price of goods to be cheaper.... so what are companies supposed to do? Basically, we forced them to sell us out to China Child Labor for lower prices and hence lower quality control, and a questionable final product.

Myself, I happily pay more for American made goods that truly are American made, like Weather Tech for instance.... and look at the quality of their goods... FAR superior to off shore junk offerings.

Suffer how? We have told them that this is acceptable so they do it.

My experience is the same as yours but I also analyze why they do it. We also have had things sent to China because it was cheaper to get simple manufacturing done there than here. We insist on certain quantity and quality levels and we get them. If you don't and just say "Make me a widget and this is the price I will pay for it, that is what you get."

Sure and the issue is that most people don't want to ask what they are paying for. Look on the threads here. "Mechanic wants $X for job Y.". What they don't tell you is what exactly is being done. All they want to hear is the lowest price. So as business person, I realize that if I stick to my guns and go with a good product, you will balk at the price and I will go out of business. I buy cheap parts. You take the cheap price and don't ask how I got it. Hang around an auto parts store sometime for a while. You will see a lot of people say they want to keep the car but buy the cheapest parts available. I saw someone bitch about a pair of Size 65 batteries. They tested good TWICE in a row. Looking at the spec, both were 100 CCA BELOW spec. Sure, they fit but in the winter, the cranking is slow and hard starts. Ya think? The program at the shop DID NOT call for that battery but the cheap owner wanted it cheap AND good. Guess he was disappointed.