Suburban Front Spindle Repair

[oliver2-44 10,782]

I have a set of Suburban front spin falls that have excessive wear from the old cast iron split bearings

The bottom of the inner bearing are measures about 0.642 and the outer 0.722. So 0.108 and 0.028 wear. 

Any suggestions how to repair or compensate for this?

Some ideas I’m kicking around are:  

1. Degrease and blast the worn area to get a profile then build it up with JB weld or Lab metal. Maybe use a piece of 3/4” pvc pipe as a mold them file/sand to size so modern flanged bearings fit

2 I have some scraps of plastic looking lube free round stock. I could have some longer split bearings machined to ride on the unworn areas. 

3. Make a stack up of something like a lock collar (in the worn area) a non flanged bearing a tubing spacer, then the outer bearing nonflanged and another lock collar. This would get bearings onto unworn area of spindle, but at a narrower support width. 

 

I,m interested in what y’all have done, or comments on the ideas I’ve thrown out

Thanks in advance!

 

[Sarge 3,465]

A welding shop that has access to a lathe could weld it up and turn the diameter back down to the correct specs - I do similar work here but not a lot of time right now.

 

Sarge

[953 nut 60,366]

If you have an oxy-acetylene torch you could build it up with Braze and then carefully file it  down. Not as high quality as Sarge's suggestion but will get the job done.

[oliver2-44 10,782]

Interesting thought @953 nut I was fairly good at brazing, but haven’t done it in almost 40 years. I remember using Tide soap powder for flux but don’t rember it that was for brazing or ox/aceteline steel welding. At my dads shop (1975 ish) we used electric fence wire for steel welding. 

Edited April 29, 2018 by oliver2-44

[pacer 3,177]

For brazing use Borax laundry powder, works as good or better than coated rods. But as an option there are now extra strength brazing rods with much more strength than the common types. Of course are a bit more expensive but I went for a bundle of 3 rods to do a 953's spindles with them (like 953 suggested) it was labor intensive but with patience they came out pretty decent. Ive still got 1 1/2 rods left to use on some other project where high strength is needed. I enjoy brazing and like to find a project to use it.

 

I have a lathe but  could NOT think of a way to mount a spindle in the lathe and be able to get a tool/bit up to it. Sarge could you elaborate a bit on what procedure you use to do this?

[Sarge 3,465]

You would have to use a 4-jaw independent chuck to be able to grip the part and get it to run true - it can take a lot of time to get it set right for what little time it takes to actually make the cut back to the correct size. Those with more experience are just a lot faster at it, as well as knowing some tricks to get it right a lot quicker. If the main diameter isn't too large, I use the tailstock drill chuck to hold the part straight, chuck it up in the 4-jaw and fine tune it from there with a dial indicator. My old Enco is not a variable speed, just a 3-speed pulley selector so I have to be careful about offset weight knocking the whole thing out of balance with larger/heavier parts.

 

Any old school welding shop usually has an old lathe around for doing this type of repair on occasion - the guy next to me gets the larger parts farmed out to him and he's way more than reasonable on cost. Might want to check around - ag-type welders are usually the most forgiving and use rain days to knock out jobs like this. There are a lot of these spindles that get worn on both the axle casting side as well as the wheel side - and not a lot of NOS parts left out there, either. We need to save/rebuild what we can and keep these things alive and in service. I never throw away spindles, even ones that are bent as they can be repaired later if needed.

 

Sarge