arse_sidewards
Red Skull Member
- Joined
- May 19, 2020
- Member Number
- 71
- Messages
- 8,571
Budget constraints. New pipe is cheaper per pound than structural which is mostly a reflection of who my supplier options are and who they cater to. I can always just step up a pipe size if I need more beef. Used material and it's not even a question. Used structural tube is barely better than new even at retail prices. Pipe is much more readily availible in any given dimension and much more frequently cheap.
I can see why those ag spindles are so attractive for what you do but they just don't fit my needs. The thing that always rules out ag stuff for me is the tire and rim options. If I had farm shit lying around and only needed to go low speeds I'd probably do that but that's not the case so I'd need to find a way to run road tires on them which becomes kind of a mess with the ag bolt patterns and rim size options. Even if this didn't need to do road speed I would use road tires anyway because used road tires are just about the only thing readily available free/cheap around here.
For the ~3k per wheel ballpark I tend to err toward Ford E350 stuff because I can get them for under $50 for everything at the junkyard, sometimes closer to $25 depending on who's at the desk. Of course I need to dick around with cutting tools before I can slap it in the lathe and make it fit the tube but a $100 hole saw investment would solve that (probably not gonna happen this time around). What would really kick ass would be some sort of carbide insert holder that's thin and long enough I can stick it on my toolpost and come in from the Z-axis and skip the time consuming step of going from "steering knuckle" to "shape I can reasonably turn down and have a tool that takes $.50 inserts rather than a $100 hole saw.
If I had tons of thick flat plate drops around I would probably do GM unit bearings. For heavier stuff that's what FF rear axles are for. The issue I'm running up against here is tires. If I could have gone deckover and ran dual wheels we wouldn't be having this thread because I'd have already done it.
I spent highschool dicking around with boat trailers so I'm fairly allergic to trailer suspension hardware hence my desire to keep this single axle. I have so much random light truck stuff around that a single axle on truck springs is free using junk whereas if I went with two axles I'd have to use trailer hardware which tacks another $100-$150 to the cost depending on spring choice.
I'm not gonna talk about the deal I'm getting because whenever I mention plans they fall through but I think I have a line on a pair of MDT axles with rims and tires that will make doing it "wrong" like this an overall lower project cost by a long shot.
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