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Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 03:03:10 :
The key was sheared off, the tapered and of the axle is bunged up, as is the hub that fits over it. Not a happy sight. Also, the axle shafts don't come out, so that means they must be held inside the pumpkin somehow. Anybody here know how a Dodge Corporate axle is put together inside? An assembly drawing would be great. My Tucker parts book isn't quit for the right year and it doesn't show the parts I have. I couldn't find anything on the Tucker site either.
With extreme luck, I just might have a spare in my bone yard, either in the Tucker parts pile or under a trailer I bought a few years ago made out of the rear end of a 50-something Dodge 1/2-ton pickup. I'd part out the trailer and sell the box if it had the axle I need. The trouble with this is that all that stuff is buried under the snow 10 miles out of town over the mountain on a snow-covered road and probably won't melt out until May.
But I have another really crazy idea. Actually, two crazy ideas. Idea one: What do you think of cleaning up the bunged up hub and axle as best I can with a "mexican milling machine" (aka file), and swapping the bad axle and hub from the left side to the right? That way the stress would be on the "good" side of the keyway grooves on the axle and the hub (unless I went up a steep hill backwards) and it should carry the load just fine.
The second crazy idea is to pound the hub onto the axle good and tight, with a key in the bunged up grooves, and then weld it all together. Warpage shouldn't be a big deal at sno-cat speeds, and the axle and hub are junk otherwise, so there isn't much to lose. The advantage of that is I wouldn't even have to tear the pumpkin apart and take the shafts out. The disadvantage is the heat might hurt the seal and ruin the heat treating of the shaft. On the other hand, the stress would be distributed a lot more evenly than with a keyway, so maybe the loss of temper wouldn't matter.
Thoughts?
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