I am not ready to throw R/E under the bus. I do agree that he has a couple of viewpoints that have not been 100% or that are more of an opinion but he has made sense far more than not.
I agree that the A/B and FMJ knuckles are both fine for street use. I am also fine with the aforementioned lug-centric wheel topic. I do agree completely in his opinion against the crop of front end suspension and steering kits that eliminate torsion bars. His theories make total sense in that regard.
He knows electrical stuff in regards to ignition, factory gauges, fuel senders, factory based drive train and brake systems, etc.
I have aftermarket wheels on my 70 Charger. The hubs do clear but the wheel center caps are a bit tight, as Blue/blu wrote. Good point made there.
Never said he was wrong about everything, I actually agree wholeheartedly with him about coilover conversions, disk brake dust shields, and quite a few suspension related topics. I love the Green Brick build, it was one of the inspirations for my Duster build. But on several occasions he has taken up positions and made claims that are just flat out false. For someone with his knowledge and resources, not to mention his influence, that's totally unacceptable in my opinion.
Having seen wheels that aren't hub centric run off center, I'll only run them with centering rings.
And as an engineer, I've yet to see Rick write anything that wasn't sound engineering (not that I've read every word he's written).
Whether you like or agree with his statements or not, his engineering ethics and principle are solid.
It's not about
liking his statements, I don't care whether he agrees with me or not about anything. The fact of the matter is that he has, on more than one occasion, made claims that were just flat out
factually false. The claims he made about ball joint overangling and the suspension geometry changes that would be induced by using FMJ spindles on an A-body were false when he made them. Had he bothered to actually check the suspension geometry changes instead of just going full Chicken Little, he would have known this. Mopar Muscle did in fact plot out the suspension geometry changes between the 73-76 A and 73+ B/R/FMJ spindles later and in doing so proved Ehrenberg's claims to be false- he was just speculating with no data to prove anything either way. And yet, even years after being proven wrong, Ehrenberg has continued to push his unsupported claims. In the rear disk brake upgrade he wrote up in the August 2018 Mopar Action he took a total victory lap on that old article, completely glossing over the non-existent spindle issue he made such a big deal out of and
still not adding the FMJ spindles to the list of spindle swaps that work.
Same for green bearings. I understand that the first generation of green bearings had some issues, and that people did in fact have problems with them. But he still straight up
harasses anyone that suggests using the new green bearings for anything other than drag racing, which is nonsense. You can check his sensationalist claims in the "tech topics" in the Mopar Action from Aug. 2018, he tells a guy to have his "friend" sign a waiver if he's going to use them. It's ridiculous. Again, I myself
prefer the original tapered bearing set ups. But the new (and by new I mean now decades old) green bearing design has been proven to hold up just fine in street applications. And the simple fact of the matter is that there are millions of cars on the road that used sealed ball bearing style wheel bearings, because they're used on a great many new cars at both the front hubs and rear axle.
I get that people make mistakes and no one is perfect, I screw things up all the time. And I don't care if we share the same opinions or not. But if he keeps pushing bad information out there after it's been shown to be bad then you can't say his ethics and principles are solid. Those aren't matters of opinion, the facts show him to be wrong in those cases. I don't care if he still recommends the tapered bearings, I do too. But to imply the green bearings are unsafe is BS. Same with the FMJ spindles. If he prefers to keep the stock geometry and recommends that, great, there's justification for that. But that doesn't mean the FMJ spindles are unsafe and can't be used, or that they aren't in fact better for some applications- because they are.
Chevy on a 5 on 4! Custom turned brass ring......had to be hub-centric as the Centerlines use a shoulder lug nut.
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Good point, those shouldered lug nut style wheels should be hubcentric. Never liked those things, but that's just my opinion.
I also like the metal hub centric ring. If you think you need one, that's what should be used. The plastic ones can absolutely be deformed, they're not going to stop the wheel from being off center. It would take doing something silly, like fully torquing the lugs out of sequence, but if you did that a plastic ring wouldn't stop the rim from moving off center. And if you do torque the 60° conical lugs as they're supposed to be, the wheel should be centered.
