Dana 70 HD rear wheel bearing hubs

[ScrapIron]

Does anyone know if the rear wheel bearing hubs on the full floating Dana 70's were all the same for the E350 dually van chassis axles? I looked up a 2004 on ford parts and it shows discontinued. Then i look up a 2005 with dually and it lists the part. Is the 2004 and 2005 part the same?

I need to order a new dually hub to take to my machinist so he can make measurements to build me a set of custom bearing hubs with the 8x200mm lug pattern and a larger diameter hubcentric shoulder.

The plan is to use 7000 series aluminum to machine complete new bearing hubs. I had a company lined up to make them over a year ago but then i got bad sick and put everything on hold and now he is way to busy to do one off custom work so i found a different machine shop that is going to do the work.

I know alot of people are running aluminum wheel adapters/spacers. Wheel adapters says the thinnest he can make adapters is 2 inches. That would push my tires way out beyond my quarter panels and look terrible. Then i would be constantly worrying about a wheel falling off.

My rig weighs 10,400 pounds dry. Do you guys think what im doing is practical using high grade aluminum or should i have them use steel?

[boywonder]

Yield strength of 7075 Al is around 63,000-69,000 psi......similar to 1020 mild steel. There are many other steels with much higher yield strength.

For comparison, 6061-T6 yield strength is around 30,000-35,000 psi.

Steel will have better fatigue strength than aluminum as well..but will be around 3x heavier roughly....and not as corrosion resistant.

Hogging out hubs from a wrought 7075 billet has got to be $$$.....for the material alone.

You may be asking a lot for aluminum to do the job of a hub on a 10,000 lb vehicle.

I've been using 2" AL rear wheel spacers for years..van weighs 9000 lbs or so...no issues. I check them every so often.

[ScrapIron]

Yes i know its a heavy pig. Are you running spacers or adapters? These wont be spacers or adapters, they will be actual complete bearing hubs. Here is the company i was originally going to have make them for me. He claimed he has never once had one of his aluminum hubs fail (true or not? I dont know).

But if you look at the vehicles he is building them for, we know they are getting abused big time. https://www.innovativemachiningsolutions.com/

I checked prices on 7075 and two feet of 10 inch diameter is approximately $1000 per foot. Then you have the machine shop design and labor costs on top of that. Its not cheap thats for certain. That why i chose innovative machine to start with. He does great work and his costs for a finished product are reasonable. But his business grew so fast that now he claims he doesnt have time for one off custom work.

Heres another link for innovative. Its a rear hub kit for a dodge dually. Notice he is only using 6061 aluminum. https://www.innovativemachiningsolut...105115-drw-kit

I know the 6061 is considerably cheaper than the 7000 series, but $680 dollars for a pair of hubs? I dont know how he can sell them at that price and stay in business. He must be getting a real bargain on his metal prices.

[boywonder]

Originally Posted by ScrapIron

Are you running spacers or adapters?

Well, they are 8 x 6.5" to 8x 6.5" one set of 8 holes fastens the spacers to the hubs and the spacers have their own lugs also 8 x 6.5".....or perhaps they are adapters....

[ScrapIron]

Ya, those would be considered wheel adapters even though the wheel and the hub share the 8x6.5 lug pattern. That means your truck is reliant on those 2 inch thick aluminum adapters to support your 9000 pound truck and any abuse you may throw at it. Likely they are 6061 aluminum because not many companies use the 7000 series aluminum to make wheel spacers or adapters.

[Rebuilder]

I used HUB124 hubs to convert my 2003 D70 to 8x200. The hubs were a direct fit but I had to make some other mods to the axle to fit the bigger discs (with internal parking brake) and calipers. If your van already has the internal parking brakes it should be a pretty easy swap. You should be able to verify if a hub will fit by comparing the bearings of the different year axles. I noticed a lot of places say the HUB 124 isn't available but I found that Orielly's had them in stock online.

[ScrapIron]

So hub124 has the 8x200mm lug pattern? Did your axle shaft mount holes line up with the holes in the hub properly?

There are so many variables to check but little to no information available about each specific hub. Such as overall height etc.... for instance if the hub isnt the same length as the van hub the axles may not be engaged deep enough into the spider gears. Will the van brake rotors interchange with the bolt pattern on the back side of the hub. If not will the F350 rotors sit in the same position as the van rotors did in relation to the calipers (meaning are they centered with the existing calipers).

Can the van rotors be redrilled to fit hub124 or do you have to use the F350 rotors?

They make it impossible to research part interchange because they dont even list basic specs such as lug bolt pattern let alone dimensions of a hub.

My truck has small brake shoes that sit inside the rear brake rotors for a park brake.

But the main issue is that i am using 2020 Dodge Ram dually wheels not ford wheels. Thats easy enough to remedy if the HUB124 is 8x200mm. The dodge wheels have the 8x200mm lug pattern, but the wheel center holes are about 1mm smaller than the Fords wheels. Chuck the hubs in a lathe and turn the hubcentric shoulder down 1mm no biggy. But what i dont want is to be spending a bunch more money modifying brake calipers, brackets, parking brakes etc... when i can just have a pair of hubs built to spec and be done with it.

[ScrapIron]

So heres a comparison between the rotors of a 2005 F350 dually 4x4 that would use 8x200mm wheels, and a 2005 E350 dually van chassis that has 8x6.5 inch wheels.

The rotors will not interchange, the center hole on the van rotors are much smaller and the bolt pattern to bolt them on the hubs is not the same.

The F350 rotor is much larger diameter than the van rotor, and the height of the rotor when layed down on a flat surface is different with the f350 rotor being taller than the van rotor when measuring front to back.

The F350 rotor is also thicker than the van rotor.

All of this and we havent even touched on the dimensions of the HUB124 versus the vans rear hub simply because those specs arent available online to the average joe.

For this hub to work on a ford dually van the hub would have to be approximately .568 inches shorter on the back side than the dually van hub. Thats the only way the rotor will line up with the centerline of the caliper. But then we are still left with a rotor that is over 1/2" inch larger diameter than the van rotors since the rotors do not interchange between hubs.

The next issue is leaf spring clearance on a dually truck between the back side of the tires and the leaf spring. Running a 9.6 inch wide tire 245/75-16 i have approximately 1/4" inch of clearance between the tire and the leaf spring. That brings us back to the hub124 and exactly where the front of the wheel mount surface is located in relation to the back side of the inner wheel bearing, otherwise known as the offset of the wheel mount surface.

I dont doubt that you made it work, but at what cost in parts and what compromises had to be made. Theres alot more to it than just getting a hub to slide over a spindle and bearings that fit properly.

If i have to put a 1/2 inch thick stack of machine washers between my caliper and the mounting bracket its a no go. If i have to forget about my park brake, its a no go. Point being, i could waste a whole bunch of time and money trying to make HUB124 fit my truck and end up with a cobbled mess, or i can just pay to have hubs built that are in fact a direct bolt on and utilize all the existing van components taking all of the guess work out of it.

Again im not saying you werent successful in making them fit your truck, im just saying there are way to many unkowns and variables on my end to even spend a dime trying to make them work.

[Rebuilder]

Sounds like you have a great plan to get custom hubs made. For my application it made more sense to go with all factory F series parts because I ended up with bigger brakes and the built in parking brakes which my E450 needed after I had to remove the factory one on the trans output to install the T Case.

[ScrapIron]

Right, and thats what im getting at. It wasnt a matter of just finding a hub with 8x200mm lugs and bearings that fit the dana70 HD axle. You had to swap the caliper brackets, calipers, rotors, hubs and everything from the F series to make everything line up within reason and have a park brake again because yours had no pre-existing axle mounted park brake.

I havent looked at my rear calipers since i changed rear tires which was a couple of years ago. But as memory serves, theres no way on earth a brake rotor 1/2" inch larger diameter is going to fit on my truck utilizing the existing caliper brackets if memory serves me correct.

Dont get me wrong, im not about spending 3 grand on custom hubs if i can goto a salvage yard and buy a complete dually axle from an F series with 8x200mm lug pattern and simply swap all of the brackets out and slip the hubs on my existing dana70 HD and end up with the same wheel mount surface offset and everything fits and functions without cobbling things together to make it work.

So theres the question, how much cobbling, shimming, spacing, or compromises had to be made in order to make it fit if any? The reason i ask is because i dont want to spend $1200 on a used axle from the junk yard and the headache to get it home and part it out only to find out i have to cobble things to make it work on the van. Then have to turn around and pay a machinist to build custom hubs for me anyway because something doesnt quite fit right and has to be shimmed or installed in a less than optimal fashion.

How much clearance did you end up with between your leaf springs and the back side of your tires?