Bought a steering Rockwell today and had look at it.

Been a few posts before about how its impossible to shorten the housing cause you carnt respline the axles.

Looking at mine you could easily shorten the housing by 2inches just by cutting the end off the inner axles and poking the inner axles into the hemisphere more by 1in each side. Looking at the wear marks on the axle splines the side gears run on the end 2inches of the axle and the splines a cut for 3inches so the axle could be shortened by 1in and the housing cut and shut to give a wms of 68in.

To go to the next level you could easily get the axles machined (or just use an angle grinder) and continue the axle splines for the complete distance of the thicker diameter on the end of the axle. By doing this (extending the spline cut length) you would be able to shorten the housing by 4inches (two inches each axle). This would then give a WMS - WMS distance of only 66in with the hubs flipped in (and run a pinion brake). On this setup you can run a 15in rim with 4in backspacing which gives you fairly norrow axle with plenty of beef for not much money.

Will take some pics tomorrow and post them of what I mean if anyone wants them.

Also worked out a bitchin way to put wheel brakes on the hubs without welding only a bit of simple maching. And as soon as I get the motor on my POS lathe fixed I will do it.

:smokin:

Sam

I hear what you are saying, and it certainly is possible, but that seems like a lot of work for a few inches of width. I think that the traditional method of shrtening one side 7 inches, and running two short-side axle shafts, is easier, and drops a lot more length from the housing. Of course, then you have to deal with off-center driveshafts, sooooo...

Keep us informed on the outboard brakes, too. I am curious.

Is 2" narrower worth the effort? 4" starts to be, but I question your methods...

To go to the next level you could easily get the axles machined
I don't think you understand how splines are created. MATCHING existing splines would be damn near impossible, if you wanted to CONTINUE an existing set of splines by 'extending the spline cut length'.

...or just use an angle grinder
I checked the date -- are you a little off on April Fools? :eek: Or maybe you have some special grinder that exactly matches the contact profile of the spline, shapes the foot, and rounds the crown, along with a jig to keep it all alignd relative to the axle centerline, and make up for wear on your 'grinder wheel?'

I'm certainly not an expert on this, but I have a pretty decent understanding of the rolling process and have witnessed spline-cutting. You may want to do more research into this....

Also worked out a bitchin way to put wheel brakes on the hubs without welding only a bit of simple maching.
Much better than pinion brakes -- that sounds good -- PICTURES, please! :D

Randii

never understood why people shorten their rockwells.

is'nt it possible to take care of the width issue by the right

offset of the wheels?

the front rockwell is about 81" and the original Reo wheels

are offseted so the wheel is almost completely within that width.

why not stick with the stock width especially when the rear

axle (which is a dual one) could be almost the same width with

wheels with the opposite offset?

i know most people do not want to be as wide as i wanted to be,

but it seems to me that the width problem can be dealt with by

only the right offsetings.

correct me if i'm wrong:eek:

randii,

I here what you are saying. Two inches isnt much althoug to do this mod wouldnt take much effort at all. I would guess it would take me half a day to shorten two steering axles this way and if the extra two inches was needed then it is a very good option. The two enches wont make any difference to me so I wouldnt bother doing this.

I dont think that getting the splines extended would be too difficult, remember these are really big splines. There are 16 of them on a 1.75in axle (you could almost use an angle grinder :flipoff2: - that bit was a joke)

elf_cruiser way of using the two short sides for a 7in reduction is the best one except I would have to buy 4 steering axles and the diff centre would be in the middle of the axle although the pinion would still be offset a little bit (5inches i think))

Anyway, hopefully I wont have to shorten the axle at all and like the frog says just do it all in the wheel backspacing. This gets a little bit tricky when trying to run wheel brakes cause with the huge backspacing on the wheels the caliper will have to sit inside the smallest part of the rim and with the hubs being so big there isnt a lot of room in there to mount the caliper and disc and everything.

My idea for mounting the disc rotor on the hub is to mount the rotor conventially but spin it aroung and bolt it to the inside face of the hub so that the cup part of the rotor extends out over the hub to give clearance away from the knuckle to mount a caliper (hubs will be flipped out to run these) Ive found all the components to do this (all Range Rover stuff) so I take some pics of what I mean. At the moment the rotor wont fit over the hub cause I need to machine about 3/16in off the outside of the hub to get it to fit.

Heres a mud map I posted on another thread but I will post some pics later today.

Sam