Slowly assembling the front axle until I hit a problem..... One of the driveshafts wouldn't fit back into the axle housing, either the splines not fitting into the diff or the bearing not matched......After some investigation the problem was resolved.
I have a number of long & short front driveshafts that have been salvaged from a several different axles. They either have rust damaged inner axle bearing or rust damaged seal collar (or both !). I found a long driveshaft with a good inner bearing track and seal collar but didn't think about the mating part of the axle bearing ! Not good practice to mix & match bearing components but as most of them were Hoffman I thought it would be OK.
Turns out that Hoffman & SKF were used, the bearing external dimensions are controlled but the diameter of the inner race that the rollers bear on is different between manufacturers.
A lot of bearing outers have been thrown out due to rust damage but I managed to find one that fitted and drifted out the one in the swivel housing and refitted the replacement. In future as a shaft is removed i'll have to write the bearing manufacturer on the shaft unless I'm replacing the bearing.
DSCN4432 by Colin Radley, on Flickr
A few swivels either being repaired or ready to throw away (any usable bearings will be kept).
DSCN4428 by Colin Radley, on Flickr
Colin
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