shooftie

Apologies for the dearth of postings over the last month or so. I have been doing a little Vanagon work but nothing that was ready to blog about (I’m looking at you, Mr Bumper Project). This post is an effort to get back on track.

I made up a spare axle (rear) with cv joints and boots some time ago and carried it around in the van thinking it would be a talisman against breaking an axle or cv joint during one of our logging road trips. Additionally, I had made some end caps for the cv joints so the joint could be all greased up and ready to go. Good friend Simon envied the idea so I gave him the assembly as a Xmas gift.

I ad another spare axle so the other day I dug it out and started to make up another spare assembly. I stripped it down, degreased the shaft, and took off the old paint and rust. I put the shaft on the lathe, tailstock and centre supporting the far end, to make painting easier. Yeah, I know, pretty sloppy habit to paint something on the lathe. But I covered the lathe to protect against overspray, put the lathe in back gear and had the shaft rotating as I sprayed the paint.

As I was doing that I noticed that the shaft had a bit of runout, i.e. it looked a little bent. Today the paint was hard enough to allow me to measure just how much runout the shaft has.

Shaft was supported at each end by V-blocks and the dial indicator positioned roughly between. I rotated the shaft by hand and watched the dial indicator. About a 0.013″ runout.

I did the same at both ends, one end it was around 0.003″ and the other end about 0.002″.

To be sure, this was a very quick and dirty way of measuring the runout, and to tell you the truth I have no idea if this is an acceptable amount of bent-ish-ness.