Rear Axel

I spoke to Steve yesterday regarding a couple of issues with the back axel of the SWB, the first was to do with the L/H hub having a 5mm ish gap between the axel shoulder and the hub this was caused be the hub not being far enough on the axel, we the fault was mine as I missed the fact the thrust washer was on the wrong round, I did know about it and had assembled it correctly first time but after stripping it down to deal with something else I put it back on wrong, so be careful.

The second issue is however not my fault having spent some time getting the clearances correct in the diff i noticed that when I tightened the 16mm nut on the R/H side that the diff locked up I found this was caused by the thrust washer tightening up against the hub and not the end of the axel, upon inspection I found my axel was a few thou below the surface of the hub and not proud as it should be the options are send the axel back or fit a thin 16mm washer behind the thrust washer, I have elected to fit the washer as I see this as the best route, be interesting if this is an isolated case, hope this will help save someone some head scratching.

thanks for the info.

one other thing to add. we had a phone call from a customer today who quite rightly commented on the fact that there seems to be no dust cover on the front hubs to cover the bearings.

just so you know, there will be a dust cover but it will be supplied in a later kit. on the original run of foden kits it was supplied in kit 21A !!!, simply due to the fact thats its an off the shelf bought in part that took a very long time to arrive in the quantities that were ordered back then.

we do have some in stock and if we can get the rest in soon enough we will bring it forwards to different kit, possibly even the water tank/steering kit (kit 7)

some thing else i noticed today whilst working on the control model, if you do have your boiler ready to drop in the chassis.... DON'T.
trust me, it will save you a lot of hard work if you wait until you have the steering and water tank in first

craig

Just as a follow up Steve/Dean sent me a couple very thin 16mm washers to fit on the r/h axel, this has eliminated the problem of the diff locking up, if any other builders have this problem then this is the route to go at it saves stripping the axel and returning it to STW to have a coulpe of thou machined of the shoulder.