Floater Kit Introduction

What is a Floater Kit, and why should I use one?

On most standard Production Car Diffs, the rear axle has a pressed on bearing, this fits inside of the diff housing inboard of the rear wheel, and is retained in place by a pressed on collar that fits on the axle shaft. The flange that holds the wheel on is usually part of the axle itself. All of the loads, weight and cornering forces transmitted to the rear wheels of the car are carried through this one small diameter bearing, and the axle shaft itself. In a standard production car being driven in normal road circumstances is usually perfectly acceptable.

However if a rear axle breaks at the outer end, there is nothing left to retain the rear wheel, hub and drive-flange assembly, and it will almost certainly fly away from the car, obviously this will cause damage, at best it will happen at low speed in an uncrowded area, and the car will simply drop to the ground on that corner and grind to a halt, at worst it could happen on a high speed corner, causing a large accident, for both the driver, and anyone in the path of the wheel that has flown off.

The possibility of an axle failure is increased when the car is driven hard, used for drag racing, burnouts, or circuit driving, and is almost certain to happen at some point, when the power and grip of the car have been increased significantly, as the forces being transmitted will be much greater than those expected by the cars designer.

To get around this, the fully floating hub uses 2 much larger diameter bearings, and a special spindle on the diff housing to locate it, this gives a much stronger way of attaching the wheel, hub and brake assembly. The axle is no longer a load bearing component for the weight of the car and cornering forces, and only has to deal with transmitting drive from the diff centre to the wheel, that way if it does break, all that will happen is a loss of drive on that corner, and the car will still be safely rolling on all 4 wheels.

For safety reasons fully floating hubs are standard fitment for many classes of circuit racing, drag racing, and rallying, and are increasingly becoming a legal requirement for modified street cars and Hot Rods.

We have Floater Kits to suit many different applications, and also offer a range of race and street legal brake kits to complement these.