(pics when I find where I set the camera memory card down)
Broke another axle, possibly while giving my coworker that ride home night before last; it mightve been after taht or on my ride to work the next morning. Not certain exactly when it happened, but by the time I reached work I could feel and even hear the motor rocking back and forth between braking and acceleration. Couldnt do anything about it until today, though (first day of my week off).
This time its the leftside MXUS inboard axle. Oddly, Id expected the clamping dropout to fail to keep it secure, but the broken-off stub was still clamped right where it should be. The outboard dropout was spread apart some, and cracked at the top where Id weld-filled it in some at some point, dont recall, but it mustve not been a good weld all the way thru.
Anyway, I dont know if the crack and spreading on the outboard happened first and the rocking/twisting on the inboard axle broke it, or if an impact or other shock broke the inboard axle first and then allowed the outboard to rock and spread.
Either way, it happened, and has to be fixed, since I dont have replacment axles or stators (and am unlikely to be ablet o make a new axle anytime soon, or a press jig to remove the old and install the new).
I thought about a number of fixes, including just adding new flats to the remaining axle (inboard of its shoulder, as theres only about 1/8 inch of the flatted axle left), or grinding slots into the shoulders and making a matching disc/plate to secure it to the dropouts with.
But I figured first Id try the easiest fix, which was to clamp the broken stub back to the rest of it and weld it back on. Unfortunately I couldnt get enough penetration even on the highest setting, so once the the flats were re-ground and filed, it was weak enough to just snap off again when I tapped it heavily with the file.
So next easiest was to grind and file an axle-sized slot in the center of the shoulder (removing the bit of remaining axle stub), cut the broken stub flat and then angle-notch that flat end so the weld could penetrate under/into it and the above slot, then tapped the stub into the slot (Id made it a very tight fit), straightened it, then welded it in.
During the weld I had a wet rag wrapped around the shoulder area, and kept adding water between spots of weld, rather than doing a continuous weld I did ti in two steps, first one end of the slot, then the other. I didnt weld the flats, because Id just hae to regrind them flat anyway.
This time it seems secure.
Fixing the spread/cracked outbaord dropout was easy; just hammered it back to parallel, then welded on high thru the crack and around it. Then I welded thru teh whole fill area. Then turned down a couple notches and surfaced the dropout faces, so I coudl regrind and file those flat and parallel (theyd taken a hammering from the axle).
Even though the inboard clamping dropout had worked as designed, its had a problem of warped nonparallel faces for some time, since the last weldin I did on it a while back. Its also got the bolt for the lcamp pretty far from teh dropout faces, so I rebuilt it to fix both of those.
I used a new piece of metal, only half the thickness of the original clamp plate, but doubled up and welded on high along its edges and in one hole thru the center. THen fit that to the original dropout plate, and welded them up. Drilled new hole thru it for the clamping bolt, as close as I could put it to the dropout face as I could and leave the space for the nut to be turned with a wrench.
Id welded the head fo teh bolt to the old hole, so I wouldnt have to use two wrenches to tighten things up, but I destroyed that end of hte bolt trying to cut the welds so I could move it to the new spot. So I welded the remainder of teh bolt inot the new hole on the forward part of the dropout, so it sticks thru the other hole on the rear part, and can do its clamping thing. However, when I tightened it up to clamp, the bolt sheared at the welded area--I guess the welding destroyed the bolts characteristics that let it work so well before. :/
So, I drilled out the remnants of the broken bolt, and looked thru my bolt stash, but didnt have one thats the same or even really similar. So I used the one most likley to be strongest that was still small enough diameter to fit thru the holes Id made (making new larger ones would require welding the old one sshut first, cuz just expanding the exising ones would mean the new bolt head/nut couldnt be turned with a wrench due to interferenc with the dropout face plate).
Anyhow, even though I was very careful alighing and refacing everything, the axle flats still werent a perfect fit with either inboard or outboard dropouts, so I ended up using shim strips before clamping things down. I also used a torque washer on the outboard dropout, to give a bit more antispin on that end of the axle, for whatever thats worth.
Id stil like to make a torque arm for the shoulders on each end fo the axle thats something like what Justin_LE is working on over here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=93562
or what Buk is working on over here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=93729
but I dunno when Ill be able to get to doing that. For now, its all tight and working, no detectable rocking, etc. Tested out first around the neighborhood, abusing it as much as possible near the house so I could get it back to the house ot fix if I had to. Then after that worked, I took a trip to the grocery store to get some stuff for the week, and its stil al working after that, too.
Well see how it holds up over time.