Ruckstell Housing

[Dave Young]

Would anyone know if the rear housings are made of cast iron or are they cast steel? I have a loose tube on a Rux housing, even after replacing all of the rivets. I’m now considering welding the tube to the end of the casting. The other option is to upsize the 1/4” rivets to 5/16”…

[Les Schubert]

The housing is cast iron so welding would be tricky!
What ever you do please ensure that the axle tube is straight/square when you are finished or you will regret it!

[Dave Young]

Thanks, Les. I'm now leaning toward ordering a new small drum left side housing from Chaffins. I see that this one was originally drilled and riveted in the wrong position. The left side radius rod holes don't line up because the axle tube it clocked slightly out of whack. Getting this straight, as you mention, will be very difficult to accomplish, as all of the rivet holes are slightly wrong. After all the money that I have sunk into this Rux up to now, replacing the housing is looking like the safest way to go.

[Dan McEachern]

Actually, I think you will find that the cast housing material is malleable iron, not cast iron- its not the same thing. The outer castings are made from the same material.

[Wayne Sheldon]

The quality and materials of their castings varied quite a bit. I have welded a couple Ruckstell housings and backing plates over the years. Some worked out very well, a couple brazed okay. One Hall Scott backing plate was a disaster! That piece had been welded on by someone else before it came to me, and was really messed up. I tried to clean away the damage, and reweld it only to find the iron of such poor quality I couldn't even braze it. The only thing I ever tried to braze before with such bad results was a part from a very old cheap iron stove.

I think some Ruckstell housings used actual Ford backing plates. Those are made of good steel, and usually easy to weld (post brass era).
As for the backing plate not lining up? Even Ford produced rear ends vary a lot in rivet placement. After the Hall Scott backing plate fiasco, I went to replace it with a Ford backing plate. I had probably ten spare rear end halves myself, then got a bunch more from a friend that wanted rid of them. As soon as I began comparing that side's backing plates to the Hall Scott, I found rivet placements were very different on most of them. Then I found a few that were close, and then got lucky and found one that was almost identical.
As I recall, there were at least two common patterns for the rivets that I saw. And exact position/rotation varied within the two patterns. I suspect the jigs were set up, the backing plates and tubes machined and sweat on. Then the holes drilled with the pieces together and rivets inserted and peened.
But that is speculation.

[Les Schubert]

My rear axle alignment tools

[Allan]

A better fix may be to weld up all the rivet holes in the axle tube. Then you can clock the centre casting to the correct alignment and drill and re-rivet in the correct orientation.

Hope this helps.
Allan from down under

[Dave Young]

I was considering doing as Alan suggested, but after seeing the beautiful alignment jig that Les uses, I decided to just go ahead a spend the million to get a new one from Chaffins, ready to install. I will be selling the housing that I have. Someone could probably send it out to Chaffins and have a left side stub installed. I didn't want to wait that long.

[Scott_Conger]

Les, you do some really interesting things with "T"s and design/use very nice tooling. Thank you for sharing, as it is always a treat.