GT3 5 Lug Conversion. Blog post 1000

Kind of hard to believe, but this post will mark the 1000th post (that means probably 500 or so pissed off 928 owners!) on the blog since I started it back in 2009. I’ll be having a party at the shop today to celebrate, but it will probably be pretty lame with me just working on cars and not talking to people. A bunch of the older posts are lacking pictures as I lost data on a server, but I have all the pictures, I just need to figure out what goes where and upload to a new ftp server…..and you know how painstakingly horrible that would be to do. This year I was pretty lacking with new material as things seemed a bit repetitive for quite some time, coupled with a few hardware changes that I was struggle to be efficient with, but I have a process figured out now and I am back in the swing of things now. For those who are new to the blog, one of the things I have always said is to read the blog with some humor as it was meant to be, and definitely not as a textbook or DIY guide for anything! More of an X-ray picture of the insides of a Porsche!

I had this GT3 come in from Arkansas on Saturday for a 5 lug conversion from the center locks. I am a bit mixed on this whole deal (because I think centerlocks are so cool!), there are a lot of guys who do it for the simplicity of being able to use a standard torque wrench and regular socket to change wheels. There are guys who say the center locks fail on track, then get online and everyone gets in a hysteria about centerlocks failing on track. Truth of the matter is, when center locks fail, it is because they either weren’t torqued properly (read a really big expensive torque wrench and the correct spec), or they weren’t locked correctly after removing the center lock nut tool (likely this one, because the locks like to stick inward after removing the tool). Look at the abuse centerlocks take on factory race cars, F1 cars, etc…..then we have a failure on a guy running in group 2 in HPDE…hmmmmm. Either way, centerlocks do take a little more effort to change the wheels. Like I said before, a large and expensive 4 foot torque wrench, and what we refer around here as “A Brake Bitch.” The wheels are torqued to a high enough value, that you can actually spin the wheel on the pavement when loosening or tightening them, so you need a 2nd person to hold the brake pedal on while you do your loosening or tightening. Not the most convenient by any means! Trying to get your kids away from playing Fallout 4 on their Playstation to come help dad change his wheels in the garage is probably a battle in itself, and if you ask your wife to help, then you will find out the torque wrench is the cheap part! Some day i’ll figure out the right hubs/offsets and suspension setup in the front to slap center locks on a 944, mostly for the cool factor 🙂 Then 911’s will be getting smoked on track by a 944 running 911 parts with a chevy motor……

So enough rambling. So the process is pretty straight forward, you will need to get new bearings, hubs, and lug nuts.

Buh bye centerlocks!

Removing the locking sleeve to get to the stub axle nut.

Nut off with big impact

And stub axle removed from the front.

Then removing the outer hub.

Which leaves the bearing exposed.

Extracting the bearing.

Bam!

And pressing the new bearing in place. The bearings are directional because of the ABS wheel sensor magnetic trigger wheel is only on the one side of the bearing. You can’t see this with the naked eye, it takes a special tool to determine which end the trigger wheel is (typically the orange side is out in the front, and the metal side is out in the rear.

And the new bearing in place.

Picture from the other side of pushing the new 5 lug hub into place.

Rear is the same procedure, but you do have a little more disassembly work to get the axle out of the way etc. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle…..happy puzzling if you do this yourself!

Extracting the bearing.

And new five lug conversion hubs in place. Easy as making a sandwich.