Dust Buggy

You are correct that mill scale is hard as a rock. A little heat on the part usually makes the mill scale pop right off. Metal expands when heated, mill scale doesn't.
 
I thought about Domex100 from Goat Built but they don’t have 1/2”
Local laser shop doesn’t use P&O.
They nested all my small parts into larger jobs to save on cost.
Future ones will definitely be P&O or Domex
 
Taking a break from the grind to mount up a second JBL Rally Bar speaker.
I had one pointed speaker down for omni directional and wanted a fuller sound so got a second to mount one forward and one reverse for 360° coverage as well as the fuller sound of 8 drivers and 300W. They link together through Bluetooth. Now all the buttons and auxiliary lights point down so it’s easy to turn on.
For whatever reason Amazon had these as factory refurbished for about 2/3 the price. Factory sealed, not a scratch or dust. I got the last one, not sorry.
95% of the time these will be garage and backyard speakers.
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DTP two wire 25A with -10 wired to fused battery disconnect so it can run with ignition off when parked.
No other wires or crappy factory pigtails.
It has an earphone and USB jack for direct connection if you don’t want the Bluetooth.
Everything is dust and splash resistant, would not recommend pressure washing.
 
Tacking together plates.
Need to turn some 1” OD x .625” ID x 1.75”+ tolerance DOM for spacers/pivot points.
Decided to use a plain bushing for radial along with a thrust washer instead of a flange. Allows for exponential more thrust load bearing surface over what small OD flange bushings were available from McMaster Carr.
Ended up throwing the outer 2 hub plates in the lathe to bore out .008 over the hub. Those are the only plates that mate the hub. The others are for the seal if you want to run one which I don’t think I will.
After tacking the plates, the hub and studs slide out with plenty of clearance which might disappear after all welding is done, in which case a drum sander can fix.
Everything is going to plan so far.
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Anyone have a spare 2005 F250 axle assembly I can use for mock up. Inner or outer or joint size doesn’t matter. I don’t want to buy a new one only to have it sit around once I get the big bells.
 
Thinking about tolerance.
The knuckle has a max distance between top and bottom plates.
The knuckle inner double shear plates can float maybe .020 over the 1.75” as the outside plates are fixed.
The inner C should be under by .020 to .040 ideally .030 being middle allowing .010 axial play up and down.
Will tack up with those shims and see what happens.
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Are you planning to weld your stacked material together where the UB bolts to? Planning to have a weld slug/heat sink?
 
Simple'72CJ said:
Are you planning to weld your stacked material together where the UB bolts to? Planning to have a weld slug/heat sink?
Click to expand...
The outside of the laminated plates will be welded but they don’t need much to hold them together as they have a lot of area and are clamped by the bolts.
Maybe a quick light TIG pass as I don’t need to fill a large fillet. That would allow for jumping around start stop and see if they start shrinking.
Or
A short MIG pass top and bottom on the flats and leave the round corners unwelded.
 
Both knuckles and C’s are tacked together.
They pivot with zero effort and no binding. When both were cooling they pivoted and fell over to one side with no input. Just the weight of not being perfectly true.
The concentricity of the inner C’s plates was the only thing I had to work on with one side and it was non visible or non measurable once it was trued up.
I m highly suspect of something going wrong as everything is going right.
Unfortunately the amount of setup and attention to measurements is very high on these. While they have been coming out exactly as planned, they are high maintenance, meaning the amount of measuring and setup and clamping and fixturing with blocks and spacers and remeasuring is necessary. Some of this can be solved with with additional design changes that make it self aligning.

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I would pound a pipe in where you have the bare threaded rod so that you can clamp the whole thing.

I'm not sure how I'd go about welding that. With those big ****ing corners you have to fill that's a lot of heat no matter how much time you spread it out over.

Maybe just burn it in no ****s given and then don't measure anything that doesn't cause problems. :laughing:

That C is really gonna want to spread or shrink so absolutely don't do the big lines down the side of it without something constraining it.
 
arse_sidewards said:
I would pound a pipe in where you have the bare threaded rod so that you can clamp the whole thing.

I'm not sure how I'd go about welding that. With those big ****ing corners you have to fill that's a lot of heat no matter how much time you spread it out over.

Maybe just burn it in no ****s given and then don't measure anything that doesn't cause problems. :laughing:

That C is really gonna want to spread or shrink so absolutely don't do the big lines down the side of it without something constraining it.
Click to expand...
Aren't larger weldments like this usually welded together than machined to final dimensions after welding?

Or is the plan here to glue it together and use it.
 
Welded them up which took about 6 hours.
.030 ER70S
Triple passed all the corners
19.7V 413WFS on a Multimatic 220
Didn’t stop to measure, didn’t want to know.
They would pivot freely until welding the inner C’s then they got tight.
Once cooled, I pulled the bolts which came out easy by hand. Then pulled them apart with a pry bar.
Put them back together with both thrust washers on the top with no pivot pin shims and no bottom washers.
They went together easy by hand. Perfect axial alignment, literally zero binding with 45° of steering. No post tolerance increase.
The C’s shrunk by .055” from upper to lower load surface.
The concentricity of the knuckle and the C’s were .063” with the knuckle being lower than the C’s.
I think once the thrust washers are seated and load applied that .063” will near .00”.
What that adds up to is the lower bottom thrust washer will need to be 3/16” instead of 1/8”. The upper bottom thrust washer will need to be 1/16”. The upper thrust washers will both be 1/8” as planned.
Grease fittings will be 1/8” drilled through holes 90° to bushings with 1/4-28” threaded fittings.
The hub ID which was .008" over, closed up and the unit bearing will not drop in. The studs are loose but the ID needs some drum standing.
Still to weld are the upper and lower ear laminated sections after grease port machining and some of the inner knuckle fillets. This might even help close the C shrink gap.

Notes to old self...
Weld everything out except for the lower C ears, save for last.
Overbore the unit bearing ID to .015"
Do this in the winter when its cold and not 94°

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Jeez you really did a great job! I really like the double sheer design, and just reading how little warping you saw, with the amount of attention this job welding the knuckles required is impressive :rockon:

We've got ball joints, BJE with brass bushing uppers, BJE with a tapered pin & brass bushing uppers, BJE with uni balls and tapered pins, new forged knuckles with built in high steer arms using factory BJ bores, bolt on and weld on high steer arms for the OEM knuckles, but THIS, this is finally something super different that I'm a huge fan of! And like you hit on, that minimal material around that upper pocket on the OEM Cs.
 
Finished welding.
Drilled the grease ports.
Drum sanded the hub ID which was only off .05” on the diameter. Only the width was off. The vertical was over by around .05”. So it egg shaped warped from the weld. I would add more material to the flat sections and make it round as well as key the side plates. That would make it easier to weld and less warping.
Cleaned everything up.
Waiting on bushings and zerks.
Measured from the hub mounting surface to the inner C plate and was short .057”.

Next up:
Double shear high steer
Grease zerks
Wheel clearance check
Brake caliper mounting
Axle disassembly and truss adjustment

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