Anyone welded an axle shaft?

BottleFed

BottleFed

New member
Well i broke the drivers side rear axle shaft last night. Its a dually Dana 80 with the Shied 37 spline axle shafts. Needlesss to say i wont be able to get one before tomorrow night for the last pull of the season up here. I searched all over town today trying to find a set of stock axle shafts to throw in and just weld it solid for this one last pull. Turns out five junk yards didnt have a single one.
Decided to try to weld it and see what happened i figure its better than not pulling at all. I figure if it $hits out again im not really out anything. Illl post a few pictures of how we did it let me know what ya'll think. We beveled the ends and put a keeper pin on the lath to keep it dead center. Then heated it to 400 deg. and welded her up good and hot. Wrapped it in a blanket to let it cool and machiened it back to round. Dunno if it will hold i guess we will find out shortly :bang

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Haisley or contact klikkel motorsports. I heard you can't get the scheid axles anymore.
 
I'm going to come right out and take a guess how long it will last....the moment the clutch is dumped or with 5 feet..... One of our mod trucks up here and did the same thing this year...he went 2 feet before it let go!
 
lol well RyanB you had the same thought i did. All my buddies and i put a bet on how far it will go. I said ten feet about the time i let the clutch all the way out. Im about ready to go load up and head out to the pulls now ill let yu know how she works!
 
Well it held litle longer than i thougt. She let loose somewhere between 75-100 feet. Ill have to look at the video to see for sure. Still pulled to 286 feet good enough for third place!
 
I am curious how close to the weld it broke could we see some pics when you get it apart and what did you use to weld it. My curiosity is getting the best of me because I am certified mig tig and stick welder and have done quite a few odd metals.
 
I will pull it apart tomorrow. I would have to guess it broke right next to the weld. We used a mig welder but I can't remember what wire ill get a little more info for you tomorrow. I had a lot of help from a friend on this one it was a little over my head and needed to get done quick!
 
Well, the OP seems to have put a lot of effort into slow cooling. With any alloy steel, that gets you closer and closer to an annealed condition, which is about as soft and weak as you can make it. So if the rest of the shaft retained some hardening, this soft spot was sure to go.

The only way to get around such a situation is to re-heat-treat the entire axle, but to do that without oxidation and scaling, you'd need some protection like tool wrap foil, and an inert atmosphere would be helpful. Not a setup you're going to find in many people's garages. And all of this would assume that the filler metal was somewhat close in composition to the axle.

That's why this shaft was kinda doomed from the start. But hey, you were points pulling, and that makes you do things you wouldn't normally try...ya just do the best you can with whatcha got and go hook it!
 
dont know if it hurt him or helped him in this case but blanketing (hard) metal after welding is not uncommon. chromoly needs to be blanketed after welding to control cool down because if it cools to quickly it gets very brittle in the HAZ
 
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