Yea, the front hubs on an S197 are a wear item. They are well designed, and do not wear nearly as as bad as some other cars out there (4th gen F-bodies flat out
EAT front hubs, as do NA/NB Miatas; these cars can sometimes only get 1-3 weekends on new hubs!). Check the bearings before each event... with the car in the air give the wheels a wiggle in/out at the top and bottom. If they have ANY noticeable wiggle, replace the bearing. They will also make noise when going bad, which should be easy to hear in all but the loudest of race cars.
WHA-WHA-WHA-WHA! We keep a spare set in our trailer.
There's no easy fix for the rear studs... if you want to have matching long ARPs out back (and it is a different part number) you need to
pull the axles and have the studs pressed in on a fairly tall press. But if you ever want to use a wheel spacer you have to use longer studs.
The Ford Motorsport hub kit above is great and includes the hubs w/ the long ARP studs installed. Even a +$50 it is still a better deal than buying the hubs then the ARPs and pressing them in.
One thing the Ford Motorsport hub kit is lacking, however, is the hub retaining nut. The part number is shown above, and it ain't cheap, but it MUST be replaced after each removal. It is a throw-away nut, and it takes 250 ft-lbs to torque, so you might need to borrow a bigger torque wrench to get it secured.
We're on our 4th set of front hubs (OEM set + 3 replacements) in 3 years of racing this car (approx 30 competition events a year). I think our wear rate is likely a bit higher than American Iron/GA cars due to the wider and grippier tires we use (315mm Hoosier A6 vs 275mm Toyos or Contis), plus that fact that that we run the car about 500 pounds heavier in TT3 trim than those cars. If they are seeing annual replacement, then guys with S197 Mustangs doing HPDE and autox on street tires will likely see even longer wear intervals, and heavier/grippier cars a bit shorter.
One thing we cannot stress enough is that FRONT BRAKE DUCTS HELP COOL THE FRONT HUBS. If you are going through front brake pads and rotors at a rapid rate you are also very likely generating some serious heat in the front wheel hubs... which the rotors bolt directly to. Front brake ducting not only extends front pad/rotor life, it extends front wheel hub life. Keep that in mind if you don't have front brake ducting yet.
edit: Jason brought up a good point when he read this. Even in the rearend, heat matters. After we switched from a clutch style diff (lots of friction/heat) to a Torsen diff we're seeing better wear and less heat related issues. We went from burning up rear axle seals, trashing clutch packs in the diff and boiling the rear axle fluid slinging it out willy nilly to .... none of that anymore. The fluid looks better, the Torsen T-2R is working better, and none of the seals are melting or leaking. All from less heat.
