This is a recent article in the Australian street rodder mag. In Australia they are much stricter about what they allow people to sell, it would be nice if more people here in the states would do these type of tests:
Mike, Some folks are afraid of tube axles and others think that the only axles anyone ever ran were ford axles. I have a tube that if I don't land a roadster cheap will go under my '38. I am not afraid of them, I have been around long enough to know that an engineers report is just that an engineers report and it is not based on practical use. I don't know why Ford only ran the V-8 60 axle one year. I think the demise of the axle was cost driven. Why build 2 axles when you can use the same axle on everything. I got an idea that the V-8 60 axle proved to not be cost effective. That is just conjecture, no doubt someone will produce a memo about them. i do know that they were sought out by racers on the salt and the drag strip for a long time. Many popular( famouse?) hot rods also used V-8 60 axles. No kid you did fine although when Jerry decided to make good on the axle you should have brought that out. That is just my opinion. What happened to your thread was that it became P&Js bashing instead of the sharing of pertinent information. Ryan is not keen on bashing a company that he knows doesn't deserve it. Ryan found out that Jerry was making the broken axle right. This thread here has been around a long time because it is about axles in general and the pit falls of different types of those on the market. it is not so much about bashing a particular company as it is about getting general usable information out to the masses. 4TTRUk I have never straightened one myself but I did help an older fella straighten one in a hydraulic press once, I helped him hold things straight and he operated the press. He had another good axle but he said you always need a spare. I have seen a broken henry forged axle before. It was hanging on the shop wall of one of the old guys I knew when I was still a young guy. He didn't stop running Henry axles because of it. Here is the deal anything that is manufactures can be flawed, even forgings can be flawed. Castings are prone to fissures and cracks (maybe the cracks come from the fissures). So if you are going to run a casting be it an axle, crank shaft or whatever you want to be sure that whomever cast it knew what he was doing. Not all castings are created equal. Oh and to be clear I have no reason to tout any particular brand to type of axle. I am just putting my information/opinion out there for arguments sake.
There was nothing in that article that mentioned AUS front beam axle standards ( if there are any)... in fact it read like a Street Rodder advertorial. But I did see the word "cast" in reference to the Hoffman axles.... 'nuff said for me.
Pork n beaner,.... I agree, that anything can have flaws....Kinda like the humans who design, and build them. "New",..only means it's "shiney" 4TTRUK
Exactly... also the crank shafts in the 68-75 big cube caddy motors are nodular cast iron and supposedly there has never been a documented failure - even the 400 mph Spectre car put 2000 hp through the stock nodular cast iron crank without issue
I see your point alright. Magnaflux would indicate surface cracks ok, and probably would have been beneficial in the tube axle example I referenced, but you are correct here. This is a problem with inferior grade of material(s) and manufacturing process. We've been confronted with porosity issues and soft grey iron, (in layman terms), on farm equipment manufactured overseas made to look like domestic equipment. Tom S. in Tn.
Well actually new can be ugly as well. If not shiney can be considered ugly. The difference between new and old for me is that old I have to look for and new I can just call up and get. My tube axle is new and old in that it was made a long time ago and it was never used. I still have 3 axles on my list to own before I die. I may never use any of them but I want to own one of each. A V-8 60 axle, a 32 heavy and an original Dego dropped axle. I have a car designed in my head around each but it is not likely any of them will, ever come about. I don't think that I have that many cars left in me. At least not on my time left verses budget.
HEMI32 - I just read right through that thread, but couldn't find anywhere that said whether the axle broke and caused the wreck, or whether the wreck caused the axle to break. Does anybody know?
Justin, email me tomorrow as I have a pic of the show board with this car at the GNRS that JR took and I am sure it says what happened. Thanks Greg
Heres another broken Superbell to add to the mix, it was only in the car a couple of months. Supposedly the car suddenly went left and ended up on its roof. Sorry for the shitty phone pics
Man that looks nasty - I hope nobody was injured. I could be wrong, but in this pic, it sorta looks like there's a bend there very near to the crack - could this have been damaged and then straightened out, leading to a crack? I know you said it was on fitted for a few months, but was it new when fitted? I had heard that there have been some Superbell failures in Australia, but hadn't seen anything to back up the rumors - I guess this is it!
Sure looks that way to me also. Perhaps the vehicle was involved in an accident that bent the axle prior to failure. That's the first failure between the perch bosses that I've seen. Bob
Damn, this is getting a little scary. I wonder if the axles have a serial or batch number marked into them somewhere?
I have a few So-Cal axles in stock and just got a hoffman/ helix one in, the hoffman are cast for sure. They have been tested and passed here by an engineering company.....but there is a noticable difference in size from so-cal to hoffman, and the so-cal has the wider line along the top to indicate it is forged.
Thats the car, the axle was new the black marks on the bottom are where it dug into the road. Scary shit indeed. when looking at the break you can see a rusty looking mark about 5mm wide around the top of the webbing.
Everyone seems to prefer a good original Henry axle to anything else on the market, and cast axles seem to be completely frowned upon. I'm wondering how a Chevy straight axle is viewed. I haven't really read anything about them in any of these threads. About a month ago I picked one up on the way el cheapo end of the financial spectrum at a local salvage yard that had called me when they set a '58 Apache. Frankly, I don't even know that it was the original axle to that truck, since the straight axle had 5-lug hubs on it and the rear axle was a 6-lug, so SOMETHING had to have been changed out. To my untrained eye, I believe it to be forged. Assuming it is the original straight axle to the truck, how does it compare to A) a Henry axle B) a decent aftermarket axle, and C) a cast piece of Chinese crap? I haven't had an opportunity to scrape the schwag off of it yet, but I'll post some pics when I do. I'm considering using it and would like to know I'm not putting anyone at risk before I do.
Arent chevy axles setup for parallel leaf spring? I once helped rebuild a front end in a stock 55 chevy truck and it was a parallel leaf setup.
OK, school me... Parallel leaf spring as opposed to..? I'd say they were pretty parallel, front to rear, one on each side, running parallel to each other, so I guess that would be a parallel leaf setup. As opposed to? I'm wondering about the strength of the axle though...
Parallel leaf springs generally refers to a pair of leaf springs on the same axle where the springs are parallel to each other and to the longitudinal centerline of the vehicle. That being said, parallel leaf spring configurations aren't always parallel. One end of the pair may not have the same distance between them as the other end, in which case they're not actually parallel but close enough to fit description. Confused yet?? Bob
Biiiiiiiig wooooooooords... Kidding. I think I got it. Thanks! Now about that axle... Actually grabbed it for a possible future "gasser" application. OR, should it be turned into a bicycle?
Older Chevy front axles used two leaf springs. . . Older Ford Axles use only one. So, the early Chevy front axles have two spring pads forged into the axle to hold the two springs in place. . . like an axle on a van. The early Ford axles didn't have these spring pads and a single spring was held in place with two removable spring perches that also held the wishbone in place. Not really interchangeable, unless you want to do a ton of cutting, grinding, and machining to ultimately wind up with an ugly looking front end on your hot rod.
OK, now I understand. Gotcha. Thanks for that. This is my first trip into the 50's. (All my other cars have been OT 60's, with the majority of them being '66. I just don't think they made an ugly car in '66.) I'm learning everything from suspension to 6V charging systems as I go, so I appreciate all the information!
Yeah sorry for the confusion, I was only asking because the setups for ford and chevy were very different so even though they may be the same strength wise they arent exactly interchangable.
Years in front end shop experience bending front axles on vehicles for caster adjustment and general straightening yielded the following: It takes most of 4 tons to bend a Ford axle; 1.5 to bend a GM. My old Mentor used to refer to the G.M.s as 'hot butter'.
What did you use to bend them Atwater Mike? I got the grand tour once of a really flash big rig truck repair shop and they had this really neat induction heating machine for doing that.
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