MTFCA Forum

Yesterday I was helping a friend do a “quick and dirty “ rear axle overhaul!! It was a original rear axle in his dirt track race car that needed to be running for the weekend and of course the original babbit thrust washer had died. He had the washers and fortunately the gears were OK. Made and installed some pins. Unfortunately he didn’t have gaskets. So a good coating of RTV, but upon setting it together we realized that we didn’t have any clearance for the thrust washers. Removed the bolts and considered some options. I realized we had a mig welder with.035 wire. Spun off a length of that and ran into around just inside the bolts that tightened them down. The carrier now turned nicely!!
So I guess really a “Mig Wire” solution!!
Obviously I don’t recommend this, but desperate times call for desperate measures!!

No Yanks involved, this is CANUK ingenuity!!

Memory fails me on what, but I do recall something used a piece of thread in between the cases, along with a sealer.
May have been H-D engine cases...??

Canuk ingenuity...

Yes indeed !... Good idea Les!....any of your ancestors use belt leather for rod bearings back ‘in the day’?

George. I think all they had was bacon. Leather was too valuable.

Seems it would have been easier to face some material off the non-ring gear side thrust washer rather than welding , but I was not there.

We use a silk thread between case halves on small Continental aircraft engines.

Dan
No welding was involved. Just used the mig wire as a spacer between the housings. It probably squeezed down to about .025”when the bolts were tightened. With time and materials I could have made a gasket, but had a deadline to meet

A couple of weeks back I put a brass mirror on the pass side of the 09 to match the one on the drivers side. I had bought the "new" one on ebay and saved some money and wanted it for the tour in Richmond. After I put it on I drove the car a few times and noticed it vibrates a lot but then so does the old one. I also noticed the glass was held in by a flat brass ring much like a piston ring with the ends not secured together and thought maybe I should do something with that but it fell out on the road before I could get to it. Not wanting the glass to fall out I took it off and when I got home looked for a way to fix it since you can not just order the ring. The only thing I could come up with was some 12 gauge copper wire that I smashed flat and then bent around the edge of the mirror glass and then used solder to hold the ends together. It worked and is not easy to notice.

No Hay was harmed in this experiment

Les, you have solved more than one problem here. By calling it HAY wire, we can now get away from the use of BAILING wire. The correct BALING wire has been side stepped.

Allan from down under.

The proper name is gasket wire now!

Steve, we have a similar use of the word 'haywire' but it has a slightly different root. When things go amiss with a wire tie baler, the spool of wire becomes the tangled mess as it get wound around the knotters etc. As an aside, the soft bale wire makes excellent oxy-welding wire when used in panel work.

Allan from down under.

Another use: hanging bird feeders from tree branches. The squirrels can not chew through it to dump everything on the ground! Sorry to go off topic, gents. Bill