that axle looks better than a few others i've seen on ebay. There are a couple of sellers on there right now, selling what appear to be an assembled axle. The spring boss' & king pin area's almost look like they are welded to the bar stock
I've never seen trace-ability data on anyone's aftermarket axles, not even Chassis Engineering's. And finding out the origin of them hasn't ever been an exercise in transparency either. So I suggest you do whatever research makes you fell warm and squishy and pull the trigger. If aftermarket axles scare you then stick with original Ford axles. Of course you will know the origin and the entire history of each and every one of those, right? Sheesh. With all the single point failure locations on the typical hot rod that could conceivably cause a crash, how do you guys ever feel comfy enough to drive them?
Seems like the question was asked, and answered. And quickly. While a lot of Chinese made items are crap, they certainly have the technology to produce a high quality part for the right price point. The problem is that most of the time, "Walmart Auto Parts" wants quality tied to a price point-the wrong way to go. FWIW, there are, and have always been, plenty of crap products produced here in the USA. Not sure what country of origin will prove.
Rick, why not get a hold of GREG32 and see if he's got an axle, might have an original then send it out for a drop. At least you know the quality and place of manufacture from the get go. Mitch
Chrome Vanadium steel. Henry knew...so did the Dodge Bros., who ran his forging operations and made the Ford axles. (and their own, too!) They never gave out the 'formula'.
[ Devil's advocate here. First, you need someone to not screw up dropping your original Ford axle. Second, I am no metallurgist, but I would imagine a re-worked dropped axle could have substantially different strength and other properties than a quality forging that was the right shape to start with.
If you look up Bous Performance Inc., you'll find that they import from Taizhou Hengxin Auto Parts Co. Ltd. so, yeah, they're importing from China, just like Speedway and a lot of others. The Summit brand intake manifolds have "Made in China" stamped right on them, the NAPA brake drums on my OT '95 F150 came from China, the packages of hardware I bought at NAPA and used to rebuild my 48 F1 brakes came from China. I'm pretty sure that the kingpins, bushings and bump stop bolts I bought from Speedway came from China. Jeff, from Bous, answered the question about whether or not their axles were forged steel pretty darned well. Myself, I'm using an original Henry made '48 axle because it already has a factory drop and I know where it was made.
OK gimpy so what are those numbers supposed to mean? That certainly is not a formula, as a matter of fact it is the symbol for two elements on the atomic table. One being CR which is for chromium, and the other V is for vanadium. Now they just may be in the formula for Old Henrys steel, but they alone do not by any stretch of the imagination make up a formula. So if the formula is known what is it?
so pete & jakes is now selling this axle? i can't seem to get an answer from them. do you have their part number?
i'd like to find an original 32 heavy and have it dropped. i never was a fan of the stretch dropped, some of them get down right ugly looking. i know you don't have to get the stretch drop and lose a little width. i'd be happy with another chassis engineering axle.
do you mean "mustang also" front suspension? as i mentioned earlier, looking at the bottom view, you can make out what remains of the wide parting line on the riderightparts axle.
Regarding the "exact" formula for the steel Henry used in his axles..... Here is the NIST Standard Reference Material (SRM) for Chrome-Vanadium-Steel (SRM-663 *note FE Cr and V values are the same for SRM-363 as well*) this is a pretty EXACT alloy and it cost $525 for 5 very small rods (imagine buying this level of precision alloy on a auto manufacturing scale). I have made the major constituents of this alloy Bold. Many of the lesser constituents have greater levels of uncertainty and are introduced to the alloy from various steps in the production process such as the quenching material, production process, environment, etc... I.E. the contents of the water or oil used for quenching. This actually varies from location to location and country to country. It is possible to identify down to the foundry were a metal was produced based on the content % and ratios of certain lesser constituents. (My company was actually tasked with this job by the DOD to try and identify where the shrapnel used in IED's was coming from.) Add to all of this the fact that these constituents are being measured and mixed by the front end loader bucket fulls and you can see that there will be a large variation from batch to batch from any given foundry at any given time. the good thing is that of the major constituents the variation is usually confined to the second decimal place. Most variation of Chrome Vanadium steel are very, very similar to 8650, Chrome vanadium steels have excellent properties such as strength, toughness, and resistance to wear and fatigue in all alloy variations. the tighter you get with your % on the formula the more expensive the alloy becomes and we all know how Henry liked to keep the cost down on his production So, I think the exact formula that Henry used is actually a fairly large range and may not have been exactly duplicated from batch to batch, even if every batch came from the same shift of men working at the same foundry in the same month (which obviously didn't happen) Elemental Composition (mass fraction in %) Carbon 0.57 Manganese 1.50 Phosphorus 0.029 Sulfur 0.0055 Silicon 0.74 Arsenic 0.010 Tin 0.095 Boron 0.00118 Lead 0.0022 Silver 0.0038 Germanium 0.010 Oxygen 0.0007 Nitrogen 0.0041 Hydrogen <0.0005 Niobium 0.049 Selenium 0.0001 Tantalum 0.053 Zirconium 0.050 Copper 0.098 Nickel 0.32 Chromium 1.31 Vanadium 0.31 Molybdenum 0.030 Tungsten 0.046 Cobalt 0.048 Titanium 0.050 Gold 0.0005 Cerium 0.0016 Hafnium 0.0015 Lanthanum 0.0006 Neodymium 0.0007 Praseodymium 0.00018 Iron 94.4 Antimony 0.002 Bismuth 0.0008 Calcium <0.0001 Magnesium 0.0005 Tellurium 0.0022 Zinc 0.0004 Aluminum 0.24 Chappy.
The standard appears to be ASTM A-231. Chromium 0.08-1.10%, vanadium 0.18%, manganese 0.7-0.9%, 0.5% carbon, 0.3% silicon
Agreed. The only dropped Henry axles that look good are the 32's. Others usually look downright fugly, especially on a fenderless car. Good for Bous on posting the video. Gives us another forget choice along with the P&J (Chassis Eng) axle. I'm running a very early Magnum axle, which I believe is forged?
Thanks for posting that. I haven't looked at their website for a long time. I am very glad to see they took on the Chassis Engineering dropped steering arms. They have always been my favorite.
Thanks for the feedback guys , I understand the concerns. We have sold a bit of these not had any returns or complaints. Also offer the axles in chrome drilled and non drilled and carry some perches, 4 link kits, bat wings, and lots more , please try not to base us off the web page its a work in progress but we need to keep the bills paid in mean time. Ill leave my contact info for questions 951-653-4114 Ill do my best to answer anything you need if I don't know give me sometime and Ill find out. Thanks again for allowing me to be part of your post.
man, why did they have to go and add that super bell logo to it? looks like i'll be looking for an original ford axle.
Thanks for the replies Riderightparts. It does help to have the real results. As the old HAMB Metallurgist, if you can provide more info it is always good. Just because Ford used Cr-V low alloy steel does not mean this is the only good material choice. I can provide even better for example a Ni-Cr-Mo alloy will have even better toughness. But at higher material cost of course. Ford used what was good for the application and met cost targets. Made in China does not mean automatically bad. China can produce very high quality parts, or very low quality parts. As the old expression goes, one good test is worth a thousand opinions. Guys on HAMB, he is trying to help answer the questions, and we should be thankful for the effort. Having more suppliers is good, assuming they produce quality parts. Yes I know we tend to like original parts, and many have been burned with poor quality aftermarket parts as well. Let's try to have open mind while allowing for appropriate level of caution. Ultimately we all want safe and reliable cars.
ok-from now on YOU get to be point man on these sort of things-you are calm and down to earth!-good on you--
"why did they have to go and add that super bell logo to it?" I don't know much about these solid axles, but one catalog listing said the logo was on only one side, so can't you just flip the axle around to show the plain side?
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