so, i bought some of these planetary axles for my mud truck.....
but they're heavy with a low pinion.... so i decided to cut them apart and graft the knuckles out onto a 2.5 ton rockwell center section.
originally the plan was to weld the cast knuckle onto the 2.5 ton housing. i tried every combination of rod/pre heat/post heat, etc that anybody would suggest. i got some pretty good results. i think i can weld up cast just as good as anybody else at this point.... but in the end, i was able to remove the test pieces with a 3lb sledge after ~30 hits. that's just unacceptable.
here's a couple of the test pieces....
so, it was decided that i would attempt to make my own "C" .... after a bunch of time making jigs, alignment bars, and figuring out other stuff.... i ended up with this.
(sorry, i didn't take great pics during this)
here is the "C" welded onto the 2.5 ton housing with the planetary from the knuckle out installed.
from this point i added some gussets from the "C" to the axle tube. i'm going to go look for the pics now, as they're not in the thread that i'm copying all this from. (i haven't updated it yet)
but they're heavy with a low pinion.... so i decided to cut them apart and graft the knuckles out onto a 2.5 ton rockwell center section.
originally the plan was to weld the cast knuckle onto the 2.5 ton housing. i tried every combination of rod/pre heat/post heat, etc that anybody would suggest. i got some pretty good results. i think i can weld up cast just as good as anybody else at this point.... but in the end, i was able to remove the test pieces with a 3lb sledge after ~30 hits. that's just unacceptable.
here's a couple of the test pieces....
so, it was decided that i would attempt to make my own "C" .... after a bunch of time making jigs, alignment bars, and figuring out other stuff.... i ended up with this.
(sorry, i didn't take great pics during this)
here is the "C" welded onto the 2.5 ton housing with the planetary from the knuckle out installed.
from this point i added some gussets from the "C" to the axle tube. i'm going to go look for the pics now, as they're not in the thread that i'm copying all this from. (i haven't updated it yet)
