Anyone have much experience with bending a Spindle on a 14bolt? On the rear of our Ultra 4 buggy we have a nice bend on the Pass side. Has a Artec Truss installed which obviously did its job though moved the weak link.
Ballistic Fab is sending us one of their 4130 Spindles 3" OD (we will need to turn it down Im sure)
I have not had to pull a spindle out of a 14bolt before. Anyone have any input? Ill Document the fix anyways
We can get the stock shaft into the spool but cant get the Yukon 4340 shaft in due to the larger diameter after the splines.
This is a video when the axle broke. You can see it hit the fall and stop which sent the car sideways. The shaft broke about 6" down from the flange.... Ironically the inside of the inner bearing is right there
That was a thought but Im scared the front spinldes are not as strong as the rears (stock fronts vs. aftermarket rears) I wouldnt trust them and prob throw them away every race. There is also the additional expense to have a double spline shaft / slug. Not the end of the world but now I can run a off the shelf flanged axle (stock or 4340)
Were you bending stock rear spindles? Did you try Ruffstuff or Ballistics?
If so how much of a pain was it to remove the factory spindle out of the housing?
I dont think so.. I think I landed real hard on the rear corner which bent at the weakest link (spindle). I think the axle was already bent and the shaft came later. You can only bend a paperclip so many times before it let go.
The shaft was broken clean. like I said 6" from the flange. Made no noise and I didnt even know it broke until someone played the video back to me.
We are doing KOH prep and went to install the new Yukon shaft only to find we couldnt hit the splines. We than put the stock shaft in and noticed the was not flush with the flange of the hub anymore.
I dont think so.. I think I landed real hard on the rear corner which bent at the weakest link (spindle). I think the axle was already bent and the shaft came later. You can only bend a paperclip so many times before it let go.
The video was taken after a 2 day event where we wheeled 16x of some nasty AZ trails. This was the last trail on the second day. It could have happened anywhere durring the weekend. The only thing I can think is I came down hard on the rear while trying to climb a big bastard. I dont remember but either way its bent
Thanks for the input.
Anyone else have anything on removing spindles from a factory axle? We have it out on the table now and will start to cut here soon. Figured I would ask before we began the figure it out stage.
I've seen two different styles of spindles in 14 bolts---sometimes you find both in the same housing.
The two curls of metal seem to suggest this spindle is friction welded to the axle tube:
This looks to be a rough forging inserted and welded into the tube:
Which style you have might not be too easy to determine from the outside, as the factory seems to do a good job of covering their tracks (not leaving exposed weld seams).
Side by side:
I've managed to get the forged style off by cutting roughly 3/4" of an inch outboard of the brake flange (on a SRW pickup housing, would be different for a DRW housing). If you can get the cut just inboard of the factory weld seam, the slug that;s left inside the tube after the cut comes out without too much of a fight.
Try to cut the friction welded one in the same spot, and it's going to feel like it's taking forever (the wall thickness is about an inch, depending on where the cut is placed.) Haven't tried it, but I suppose you could open up the I.D. with a grinding cone on an angle grinder enough to slip a new spindle in.
From what little i know of 14bolts I believe the spindle is swedged down and then machined for the bearings. So in order to fix it measure the new hub length to find the cut point. Clean the housing end, turn spindle to fit in housing and weld it up with the alignment bar.
I would grind the I.D. of the tube so that it is clean and will loosly fit the spindle. I have a feeling your new spindle will not be exact to the end of the tube once you put a bar in it.
Jake
I have 2 bent spindle on the 14b in my Toy now. Standard SRW housing with C+C hubs on it. Both are bent up and forward enough I need to put a jack on the end of the shaft to line the bolts up I dont know how the shafts are holding up but they are stock and I'm less than worried about them.
I have the replacement sitting on stands here. RS 4140 chomo spindles on it and a Artec truss and C+C hubs again. Hopefully thats enough for a trail rig. If not I'll be building a bling housing thats total overkill. I looked into running the front spindles in back and it get's pricy fast for a trailrig.
Contact Zach from A to Z fab, they did mine cause I dont have a alignment bar and the spindles had to be turned to fit. IIRC the cut the end's off and cut the remaining slug inside and pulled it out. 1 side they made a fixture to hole saw the remaining slug peice out cause it wouldnt move. I have 4 plug weld's each spindle and fully welded of course all around.
I have 2 bent spindle on the 14b in my Toy now. Standard SRW housing with C+C hubs on it. Both are bent up and forward enough I need to put a jack on the end of the shaft to line the bolts up I dont know how the shafts are holding up but they are stock and I'm less than worried about them.
Shit man just looking at time wise does it make sense to just start over with another 14? Even though i know you just did after the tree jumped out in front of you..
Main goal is to keep from happening again. This axle was only in for 4x races this year. I dont want to have to put a new axle in 2x a year. Also if this let go durring a big race it would have sucked worse than when it did.
We are cutting a bit more back now to see if we can open it up enough to get the slug in. Either way at this point its going to narrow the axle up a bit.
We are thinking of making a sleave to put in there to move the spindle back out
The thing about changing to front spindles is I think they would be smaller, weaker and you would need different hubs. 40 spline stuff would be cool, but what about Sterling spindles and hubs. Not sure of the spline count but should be relatively affordable and hell for stout.
Do you know how far they put the sleave? From what we can see our plan is to cut right past the friction weld and machine a sleave to run inside the 14b tube 4" than into a peice of 3.5x3/8 wall tube a few inches. The spindle will than press into that 2"
One thing to consider, and im doing it on my rear diff is to machine a spacer that seats behind the otter bearing and the shoulder of the spindle. Once the length of the spacer is determined and gives the proper preload on the bearings you can crank the spindle nut tight and now in a way you have increased the diameter of the spindle.
Dose that make sense? Basically setting it up like a pinion with a solid spacer.
sorry if I'm wrong but I have a 60 front and 14 bolt laying on the floor and was swapping hubs back and forth for experimental reasons of my own. the hubs seemed to swap between the two no prob other than seals I think , so couldn't you use the bolt on spindle setup on the rear with 14 bolt hubs and axles?
We ended up cutting on the inside of the friction weld and making a sleave to press into the tube. Than built a peice to extent the housing back out which the new Ballistic fab spindle pressed into. All welded up and good to go!
You can see here the heat mark from the shaft rubbing against the spindle
The ID of the 14b was a very odd size.
Here is the start of the sleave we made.
finished and ready to part in half. One for each side.
A little weld majic and were good to go. Not a easy fix but not horrible. I have the specs writen down for this axle and I have talked with ballistic about making them so someone can do it themselves at home without a lathe.
Thanks for all the adivse and hope this helps someone in the future.
Bringing this back up! We broke the spindle off our D60 and trying to figure out the best way to fix it axle is already a Frankenstein but we have enought to do this only thing is our spindle came from solid manufacturing and is a lot more beefier than the ballistic one from looking at the pics. So a lathe is definitely coming into play. If you don't mind I'd like to piggy back on this and do a write up so its all in one location
I have not used the Solid press in spindles but I can tell you the ballistic ones are HUGE!
I was also talking with Torq this weekend and they say they have a really nice one out as well.
After bending another spindle we are going to try D60 fronts on the back. I know Im not gaining much strenth but I can replace them as I need / or feel I need to. I got the spindle adapter from Ruffstuff and am using Yukon D60 Chevy spindle / hubs. The Adapter will run both Ford or Chevy. My only complaint is they are not very thick so you really need to do some gusset work.
Please add to this thread with what you do and how it turns out.
I run what you are thinking about with the RS flanges and D60 front spindles. I really like it as a system. Just be aware that the 14bolt spline profile just barely doesn't fit through the D60 spindle. So you need to bore it a tiny bit. I run 35 spline d60 outers so I could just pop off the spindle and then slide it back over the axle. I think you will find this option less likely to bend because of the flange on the spindle. Complete opinion, but I believe the step to the flange and the flange itself reinforce the spindle, which makes it less likely to bend.
Yea when I get out to the shop ill measure both the Ballistic and Stock D60 chevy.
My only concern / thought is you can only make the ID / OD the same for the 14bolt spindles.... So any strenth gain must come from material not actual size.
Replaced both and bent the aftermarket as well. It was again prob well deserved but bent none the less.
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