Several years ago my old roadster was involved in a accident due to driving in a heavy down pour,suffice to say hydroplaning is not fun and the unexpected spin resulted in contact with a guardrail en route to the Goodguys show in Indy. No one was hurt,with the exception of feelings and one of the guys in the group knew someone in the area and arrangements were made for him to pick up the car and store it until the return trip. The Superbell tube axle was bent but it didn't break so we knew a new axle had to be purchased at the show. Hard to believe,with all the vendors at the show there was only two vendors that had axles with them and both were the new aluminum Superbell axles,super light and polished to a high shine,so it was purchased. I was fine with it until one day a bunch of us were standing around shooting the breeze and one of the guys just kicked the wheel and I actually saw the axle flex,I said do the again except harder,it shook even more. I got paranoid and worried about it every time I drove the car so I decided that I was going to replace it with a forged axle and I purchased one from Chassis Engineering but within a month I got a call from a guy that wanted to buy the car. All this was before I joined the hamb,I'm sure there was a lot of research before the axle was released to the public but I will never use another one. HRP
The one that really scares me is the one from Hoffman group sells for $100 on eBay , any company that sells steering columns with plastic joints , probably doesn't have my saftey first on their list While superbell did have an issue , they didn't sweep it under the rug .. They manned up and had a recall , which speaks volumes to me , I'd rather have an old ford axle , but I wouldn't worry about using a superbell if the price was right I remember a someone stainless axle on the market same era as the aluminum one , I can't remember which one but after about 5k miles the axle started to droop and camber changed a bunch
Danny I had to wait nearly a year for my Chassis Eng. axle because they were updating tooling and sourcing a new forging vendor, worth the wait. I know guys, get a Henry axle and have it dropped,blah, blah, blah. We are lucky to have companies willing to go the extra mile to build safe hot rod components like C.E. There will come a time when original axles will be next to impossible to find.
An aluminum duplicate of a steel part will be 3X more flexible than the steel part. It may or may not break, but it will deflect 3X more.
I have a tube axle on my 32 but have no idea who made it. Going to LARS a few years back I hit a very large( 30+) pound raccoon. It threw the car side ways but happened so fast that I had no time to react & just kept my foot on the go pedal doing approx. 65 mph.` Car straightened right up. It bent the crap out of the bumper & shock mount but the axle came thru it OK. By the time I got home the shock mount had ripped out of the frame.
Now I have a 5.5 SuperBell axle in my Roadster. 40 K miles on it. If you have ever taken a close look at a original axle that has been dropped. The area from the spring perch to the King Pin gets pretty thin. That always worried me.
I've noticed that also,they do look a little sketchy but I would imagine they are still pretty tuff. HRP
No matter what steel axle you buy, get forged all the way. Avoid the powdered metal casting ones like the plague. A fellah almost (or did, I don't recall) died here on the 5 North of Burbank in a roadster accident a couple years ago. Not sure if a pothole caused it, but the only picture of what was left of the car showed a snapped axle. I hope he lived and recovered. When it comes to Henry axles, THIS is why I would worry less about an overly stretched perch: Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Are you sure about that? I know that Magnum had a recall, but I can't recall SuperBell having one.......
My '32 coupe has an Original Henry axle that was dropped Ed "Axle" Stewart (Dago Axles) back in the 60's. If you kick the front wheel it will flex the same way you are describing! I was shocked the first time I saw that, but it's still heading down the road just fine with some 50 years of flexing!
To add.... It's all in the design of material. Jets wings and fuselage are aluminum. Designed to flex. Ever sit beside a planes wings and watch those babies move around during high wind?? Makes my stomach flip.
Engineering 101: The scary part about aluminum is that it does not have an infinite fatigue life like steel. With steel, if you can get the stress levels low enough (usually around 1/2 of it's ultimate strength) for a given load cycle, it will not fail via fatigue no matter how many times it is subjected to that load cycle (30 lb raccoons not withstanding!). Aluminum does not share that property. Even the smallest load cycle will cause aluminum to fail eventually given enough load cycles. This is why aircraft are thoroughly inspected at regular intervals and the number of take off and landing cycles (where the largest loads are accumulated) are closely documented and counted. Combine this special property with a Hoffman $100 part that is made in a dirt floor factory in some remote part of China with no process or quality control and is likely to be full of casting / forging defects and inclusions and you have a recipe for disaster. Aluminum Suspension components should be cleaned and inspected regularly and thoroughly for cracks and deterioration. Always a good idea regardless of the material, but more vital with aluminum parts.
http://www.pentictonfoundry.com/news/ductile-iron-vs-steel/ Check it out. Super bell advertises as ductile iron. Chinese axles are cast steel , read the link to see which is better. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Steel will show you it's getting weak by bending. Aluminum cracks and breaks. Aluminum has to be so much thicker than steel to maintain the same strength and impact resistance.
I have a dropped I beam axle that I bought from TCI. It was on my '31 Tudor before I changed to a SoCal chrome dropped axle. I bought it years back (2004-2006?) before I heard anything about aftermarket axle failures. Does anyone know for sure what the TCI axles are? Who supplies them? From the surface finish it looks cast.
That's because guys like me horde them. I think I have about 30 axles at the moment.... Sent from my SM-G900T using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
This is exactly right. As the HAMB metallurgist, there are two things that make aluminum a bad choice for an axle: 1. The lack of a fatigue limit. It *will* develop fatigue cracks eventually, although that time may be way beyond the life of the vehicle. This is also the reason why aluminum connecting rods have a finite life and need to be replaced - they will develop cracks eventually, and a broken con-rod is bad. 2. Aluminum has a modulus of elasticity that is approx 1/3 that of steel. This means that given the same size and profile, aluminum will flex three times as much for the same applied load. To have the same bending/twisting properties, the aluminum piece needs to be made larger and a different shape. Again using connecting rods as example, look at how much thicker and larger profile they are vs forged steel. Same thing needs to happen for a front axle. My recommendation is stick with forged steel vs aluminum. Suspension parts are one area where you should not go cheap.
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