The C5 Corvette is an amazingly well engineered machine. It needs nothing from the factory, and for most folks, the car only needs routine maintenance or replacement of items as they begin to push 20 plus years old. However, raise the performance ceiling a bit, and you start to find new limitations. One such limitation folks start to encounter early with Autocross, Track and Drift, is the OEM wheel bearings. As soon as you introduce frequent and more significant braking forces possible from the factory, or introduce lateral loads beyond what was possible when the cars were released (see the progression of 200tw tires and lap times), the wheel bearings quickly become a point of failure.
Don't just take our word for it. Here's a picture of the near catastrophic wheel bearing failure of our author Shred Jesse's 1999C5 Corvette time attack Corvette. As you ca see, it developed a crack radially along the wheel bearing. By the time Jesse caught it, only 1/3 of the wheel bearing was holding the wheel on!
So what's a person to do when they crack the wheel bearing? If you've replaced one on a C5 Corvette, you know you don't want to be treating this item as a rapid consumable if possible. While the job is well within the wheel house of most driveway level, there's still a decent chunk of time involve in pulling everything apart. You want a one and done solution ideally, especially since if it does fail mid event the consequences can be very significant.
There are a lot of aftermarket parts store options such as Moog and the like. These... are not recommended. They just don't last, and are really meant as a street going replacement. What you want is an upgrade.
There is also the option of the SKF X-Tracker wheel bearing. These are renowned for their durability and have been tested at the highest levels of racing with C5 Corvettes... but at $1600 a set, they're a fair bit of money out of pocket.
Enter: Mechanical Power (MPI) and Their Wheel Bearing for the C5 Corvette. MPI has been making bearings for half a century and counting. They recently decided to pop on over into the C5 Corvette market with a better priced and equally if not superiorly robust solution to the current offerings. At $229 a wheel bearing, a set of 4 of these will run you under $1000, which is still not exactly cheap, but at nearly half the price of a set of SKF X-tracker wheel bearings, they're worth your attention.
Now well informed C5 Corvette owners will know that MPI has had C5 Corvette offerings for a few years now with their Version 1 and Version 2 offerings. Our author Shred Jesse actually got on some of the original bearings and has been helping field test them on his White C5 Corvette, and still to this day runs the MPI V1 wheel bearings on the rear of his C5 Corvette. The bearings were good and for most users functional, but Shred Jesse and others racing the wheels exposed where they product could improve, and MPI listened and developed their V3 bearings.
As luck would have it, we've been building up the chassis of our Dead to Shred C5 Corvette for hitting the track, making our car a perfect test mule for the new MPI V3 wheel bearings. We reached out, received a full set of MPI V3 bearings for testing.
Visual Comparison of the MPI Wheel Bearings
Here's a side by side shot of the OEM wheel bearings next to the MPI V3 wheel bearings. If you can't already tell, the MPI is notably stouter. Besides the nicer finish, the wheel studs are also increased in length to accomodate larger aftermarket wheels along with easier wheel changes in general.
If you really want to see how much more stout the wheel bearings are though, look at the two of them from a side on view. The MPI has nearly twice the hub thickness of the OEM wheel bearing, which then quickly flanges to be even thicker. These are truly impressive pieces of kit!
Track Tested & Abused
Now what's a good product review of a product that's meant to take some serious abuse without some serious abuse? We bolted the MPI Wheel Bearings on and threw a ton of different drivers, disciplines and tracks at them. From several rounds of autocross and an open track day with 5 different drivers shredding the car (all before we even had ABS figured out) to another open track day calling, we put the MPI V3 Wheel bearings Corvette through it's paces!
Above is the car at a WMC Autocross event, just after restoring ABS but before we had fully added aero onto the car. Two different drivers of two different skill levels took to the course and put down good times for both of their respective categories, along with finishing with the fastest Corvette of the day!
(Insert ORP picture with white Corvette chasing it)
We also hammered on the car at not one but TWO open track events at ORP with multiple drivers. With some seat time and solid configuration on the car e were able to run a mere second and a half behind Shred Jesse's Time Attack C5 with our most experienced driver at the the helm, which is insanely impressive for a largely stock car. We were also able to get one of our other intermediate level testers down to a sub 2 minute lap time at ORP, their first such foray into faster lap times like that.
Now like we said, we drove the pants off of this car. In Fact, we drove the Dead to Shred Corvette so hard and for such extended durations that we cracked the 14" solid front rotors! If that doesn't show you how much force and heat we put into these cars, nothing will!
So how did the wheel bearings stack up to the abuse? Pulling the Grey Corvette back onto the lift after the event and checking for bearing play, we found not a thousandth of deflection in the wheel bearings. The ABS sensors are holding up great as well, and we're well past the point where OEM bearings would have failed us as demonstrated by the cracked brake rotors... and yet the MPI Wheel Bearings are still trucking along!
After years of testing and product refinement, we think MPI really got their details right and have put together a product that unseats the SKF X-tracker. We'll be running these on our Grey Corvette, and we'll keep you all updated if anything changes... but thus far we'd be real surprised if these weren't in it for the long haul!
