I am not absolutely sure, however the slots increase the surface area of the steel. The increased surface area means greater strength. If I am mistaken please correct me. I am nothing more than a FNG.
sorry , that's not a superbell..i believe it's an dropped original ford axle is it safe? no..send it to me and i will dispose of it properly
Yeah, definitely NOT a superbell, but there was an underlying point in that... If superbell is doing it from aluminum then a slotted steel axle would potentially be stronger (depending on how the Superbell is actually made, not familiar with their products). Not by much though. It would also depend on if this was a split bone setup or a stock wishbone setup that it would be used on. If it was to be used in a split bone setup, it would see more twist. If it were being used in a "stock" fashion, it would probably be okay. Not sure how well I would sleep with that much material removed, but that's just me. Someone was definitely looking to lose some weight up front.
Steel makes steel stronger, not surface area. If you take steel away, it is always less strong. But, if you take it away in the places it is doing very little work, it is ok to a certain degree. The flanges do all the work in the beam. The web just holds the flanges in place. But, to be perfectly honest, without stress testing, I have no idea if the slotted holes are a bit too long and would allow the flanges to deform too easily and then there destroy the strength of the beam. But, that is how the engineering of a bean works. I am pretty sure it is likely a bit less strong than a similar one with just min. holes, but not really sure just looking at it.
I've seen them done like that with pieces of .375 steel rod welded to the flanges in the middle of the slots.
Surface area of the steel? Engineering 101 tells us that if you multiply the length of the axle times PI (that's 3.14 for you mathmatically challenged types), subtract the overall thickness of the metal, and then divide that number by the total circumference of the piecewise polynomial form of the cubic spline interpolant, you won't be any closer to the answer than before you started reading this...
You are wrong. I don't have the math, but there is no way removing material will strengthen the structure. By your logic, creating a giant hole in the center so that only 1/8" of steel surrounds the hole would be the strongest possible solution -and that doesn't make sense. Removing material,ie drilling holes, will always weaken the axle,the questions are how much strength does the axle have beyond the needs of the car it's on and how much metal can you remove without exceeding that limit.
slotting or drilling will not make it stronger.. it is simply an easy way to lighten without reducing the strength much... the resistance of the object to bending has to do with the section modulus of the cross section (i think i remember that right from when i used to do these kind of calcuations). removing a little bit of webing from an eye beam does not affect the section modulus much. sooo without getting into "beam equations" i'd say my gut feel is that the slots are little two wide and they worry me a bit. The beauty of a hole or a narrow slot is that the weakest point (esentially the top of the hole) is relatively small... Elongating the hole makes that area more prone to bending...
The weakening occurs between the perches, not at the ends, where the majority of the stress and flex occurs. The result will be an axle that will have more torsional flex. Will it break? Can't say for sure. I'd say it's better-suited to a lightweight drag car. Axle drilling originated on circle track cars, as a way of increasing the torsional flex, to keep the left front wheel on a sprint car planted on the track more. Drag racers picked up the idea, to save weight. Dave http://www.roadsters.com/
It is a real ford axle that is droped..and will have hair pins not split wish bones.... here are some better pics...
absolutely. This is what is known as "engineering". Current beam modeling theory operates on this basis, and assumes this about the web section: the web is infinitely strong and is only in transverse shear. This assumption holds true for most cases, but not this one, namely because there is no web. That axle has been weakened considerably. With no web to provide a shear force, the axle can do what is commonly called parallelogram. Imagine a cardboard box on its side with the ends cut out, the box will just fall over. The same thing can happen to that axle during a corner. Will it fail? I don't know. But if it does, I know the mechanism by which it will.
I'm not a engineer but I play one on the internet. Seriously though, as a welder/fabricator for the past 35 yrs., many of which were in structual steel, my modeling modulus cross-sectional calculations tell me............I'll take it off your hands if you don't want it.
I do remember reading an article in one of the magazines a few years ago about the then new Superbell aluminum axle. They had failure tested one with slots and one without them and found that the solid one failed first. They had an engineering reason for it but I don't remember the details now. Anyway, that slotted axle would look great hanging on my wall and I would do it as a public service to protect the public.
Isn't it correct that a solid rod will bend before a somewhat heavy walled tube of the same diameter? I think what you have may be an old drag racing axle. Since the cars were lightweight - comparitively speaking - and the track smooth it would have worked well in that element. You could run it, keep a close eye on it and it may show a bend before a failure. But . . . since you're running radius rods it may end up breaking sooner than later due to the repeated twisting forces involved. It is an I-beam in cross-section and they're not normally used in a twisting application. I run a standard SuperBell 4" dropped tube axle and 4-bars on the 32 and once in a while, when you hit those killer surprise potholes, I wonder if it's all gonna hang together. One way to answer questions like this; what would Henry Ford have done? Contrary to what many think he was very quality minded, but as the stories go, he could be cheap at times. It would not have been difficult to set up the axle forging process to have hollow areas so as to save metal. Saving $$ per unit is a big deal to the factories. As an example Ford used to have a suggestion box in the 60's and/or the 70's and they paid cash money for suggestions that saved money on each car built. As an example, saving a nickel per car would net you a $2000. check. If it was a good idea you can bet Ol Henry woulda done it....
Unless you melt it down or grind it to dust that axle will still be holding a couple of spindles apart and a car off the ground well after you and I are watching grass from the bottom side. Frank
I machined up two pieces for a race car many years ago. They were reinforcing structure in a pair of 'glas noses. One had round holes,the other had large slots.There was a definite difference in stiffness between the two.The difference in weight was minimal . Both worked fine in that application. Adding slots reduced the surface area,because the web isn't thick enough to add more area than was removed. Increased surface area,for a given weight, might be stronger when dealing with hollow structures.
As a interesting sidenote, any of you that have been to Speedy Bill's museum in Lincoln, NE have seen the Ford I-beam twisted like a pretzel the entire length of the beam. It was supposedly a factory Ford ad prop to show how strong their axle was. I always wondered if it was bent cold or heated up. One hell of a neat piece!!
Brad S.'s roadster came with an axle like that. We were leery at first, but he has driven the shit out of it for the past year or more...
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