MTFCA Forum

Hello,
I hear stories of broken rear axles and I see floating rear hubs advertised to prevent this from happening. How often did this happen back in the day when roads were really bad? Also, our current roads are better, but the axles are over 100 years old, how often does this occur now? Is it caused by hitting big bumps or just being overloaded or is it just random chance?
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I drive my 1914 Touring car pretty fast when I am alone, but go slow and easy when I have a car full of passengers. I have always been a little worried about breaking a wooden wheel when fully loaded.
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Thanks...

Are your axles original or have they been replaced with modern replacements ? I have mint original Ford axles in my Racer that I built over 30 years ago and installed McEachern safety hubs 20 years ago !

First, safety hubs do not prevent broken axles. Depending on how they are installed they may prevent the wheel/axle from departing from the car, allowing a safe stop.
I have only ever broken one axle in almost 60 years of T driving, so it is a rare occurence in my experience. That one axle broke at traffic lights when i went to take off. A gentle click was all I heard and the car failed to proceed!

Allan from down under.

Agreed Allan - my only concern was dropping my Ruckstell on the ground at speed !

In 45 years I have not broken an axle. I dont recall anyone in our club breaking an axle ever.
I did see a fellow break an axle on a national tour. (one of many that typically have 80-100 participants.)
That break occurred @ the edge of a ball bearing conversion. Clean shear right @ the bearing edge.(Stay with original Hyatt rollers.)
I have seen a break from an inner seal with steel fingers that scratched the axle.
All my rear end builds are/were with excellent FORD axles. I trust ford more than a repop part.

I conclude that such breaks are very uncommon/rare when looking @ the cumulative miles we all drive.

Breaking an axle is not a concern to me.
If you want to be worried about something, worry about modern drivers doing something reckless & stupid to hurt you.
you are much more likely to be hit by another driver.
Remember Steve Jelf.

My father told me that in 1949, a rear axle broke on his 1927 Tudor and the wheel went down the street without the car.

He said instead of replacing the axle, he took a rear end off a junked 1927 and put it in his car. He said the replacement rear end was worn-out and growled every time he went around a corner.

The following is an excerpt from The Reminiscences of Mr. John Wandersee:

All during this period from 1908, when vanadium had been perfected in the heat treat process to be used in the Model T car, we were experimenting constantiy on metals. On a lot of parts, like axle shafts, we got much better service and life on the manganese carbon steel properly heat treated than you could get out of a fancy alloy steel. For instance, when we were using chrome vanadium steel
for the rear axle of the Model T car, after we had about 10,000,000 cars on the road, you could drive from here downtown any day you wanted to and see two or three rear wheels laying on the pavement.

We had to stop that. We couldn't redesign the Model T car but we had to stop that. We cut out the chrome vanadium。It wasn’t so much cutting out the chrome vanadium, it was going to a different heat treat. We devised by proper analysis manganese carbon steel and then heat treated it to give us the desired results. We dried up everything. We dried up our rear axle trouble and our crankshaft trouble. We had a lot of crankshaft breakage. We substituted manganese carbon there too, properly heat treated.

- The Reminiscences of Mr. John Wandersee, page 47.

Ford designated carbon manganese steel as type EE steel. Vanadium steel was designated as AA or AAX steel. According to the drawing for the rear axle shaft, shafts made from EE steel were identified by stamping the name “Ford” in script in the keyway of the axle.

It must have happened regularly back in the day, enough so they would make an emergency tool for the occasion.

That's interesting Trent.
I have a number of axles with the Ford script in the keyway, but I was not aware of the significance. In mining stuff from my stash at the farm, my spares could have come from any rear axle assembly, but while i do have Ford axles so stamped, I do not have many big brake drum housings.

Allan from down under.

My grandfather had a 1919 Touring car. My dad told the story of riding around with his father, on Belle Isle, (a park on the Detroit River), when suddenly a lone wheel passed them by. Grandpa laughed and said, "Ha! Some fool lost a wheel." It was at that moment that the rear end of Grandpa's car sunk to the ground and dragged to a stop. He somehow got a hold of one of those emergency axles, (shown above), and had the car towed home. This would have been in the 1920's.

I always thought the reason for breaking a rear axle was an axle castellated nut not too tight. Thereby allowing the hub key to wallow around and finally breaking a chunk out of the tapered keyway. The more $ frugal among us would have a keyway machined 180* from the broken keyway. So I wouldn’t have thought that thick axle shaft would break. BTW, thank you Trent for the steel improvement info of machined components thru production.

I overhauled a Ruckstell that had been sitting on a rancher's hill for 70 years and replaced with new axles in 2004. The right axle broke while pulling from a stop sign on the Hamilton tour in 2024. My research showed a bad batch of axles produced prior to my replacement. It broke just inside of the Hyatte bearing. Of interest, the keyway was only cut 0.110" deep. https://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/2 ... 1191554745