Craftsman front wheel axle is bent
richard48367
16 years ago
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unclecrab
16 years agorcmoser
16 years agoRelated Discussions
Personal Pace front wheel wobble
Comments (3)Thanks for the replies. I disassembled everything this morning and found the Height of Cut bracket ( black bracket with the height tabs on top) to have a center hole that was slightly bent outward. This is what caused the free play in the center bushing that in turn caused wheel play. I was able to straighten it on a work bench by tapping a 15/16 socket over the bushing and seating it on the bracket. The bushing is now tight in the bracket center hole and the wheel is much tighter....See MoreCast iron axles
Comments (20)Weight costs money, whether it is cast iron or sheet/bar steel, although cast is a bit cheaper. There is no doubt you could build a very good fabricated front axel from sheet and bar steel,it could be stronger than a cast one, but it would probably cost more than a cast one to make. The low end guys use fabricated front axels because they can get "acceptable" strength at the lowest cost. The weak points seem to be at the pivot, as was mentioned, as many use extruded sections for pivot support instead of welded in tubing and bushings. The typical "I beam" style they use also seems to be pretty weak when it sees twisting style loads. When it comes to the strenth of non fabricated axels, as was said, a forging would be by far the best, but are very expensive. Casting materials also vary a lot, but if nodular iron were used, it would start to approach the strenth of a non high strength forging. Plain old grey cast iron is not very strong, but it is the cheapest, so sections can be a bit thicker at the same price point. Cast iron also has pretty good internal damping characteristics, so it will take out some vibrations and such. It is also somewhat self lubricating, so they will eliminate bushings to save some money. I can't say what is up with the lawn and garden stuff, but there is getting to be a LOT of asian and other 3rd world cast iron showing up in products. It is usually of pretty poor quality both from a metallurgical (made almost completely from scrap) and from a casting methods standpoint. The castings I have cut apart are full of inclusions, poor mix, hard spots, sand, etc., and are very prone to failure comapared to good clean castins....See MoreHow Much Front Wheel Endplay?
Comments (19)Just for a minute, let me get back to the question of endplay.... With 1/4 inch of endplay of the wheels on the axles, it seems that every time one turns from right to left or back again, the chassis of the mower will literally slide a quarter inch one way or the other before any 'turning' can occur. That cannot be good and only contribute to a less firm feeling in the steering. Would the sintered brass bushings work better with more endplay? I don't think so, because the bushings are really designed to 'grease' rotary motion, not lateral motion along the axle. It seems, to me, that the bushings would wear more with a lot of endplay. Removing ALL of the endplay cannot be good thing. If there is no endplay there will be no room for thermal expansion. The wheels certainly get warm with the load and rotary motion. Add to that heating from the nearby hot engine and muffler exhaust and there is probably a measurable expansion of the wheel assembly and therefore less endplay with use. So, for now, I have settled on a small amount of endplay (about 1/32 inch when cold)....See MoreCraftsman Front Tractor Scoop
Comments (19)kachinee wrote: There may be a practical use for them, but I am wondering what it is. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>I think the main purpose would be the ability for the user to just drive into a pile of mulch and pick up a full scoop of it, thus saving the time and effort needed to use a garden fork to load a trailer. I also see no valid reason as to why one could not haul gravel, pavers or balled/burlapped trees in this device as long as the scoop was large enough and the weight of the item/s doesn't exceed the capacity of the scoop. On a side note, I have the following comments. In the world of construction machinery, there are front-end loaders and there are "excavators". These are usually two separate and distinct machines. Most FEL's are just that: a loading device mounted to the front end of a motorized device. They were never designed to be used to "excavate" virgin ground. The two major exceptions to this rule would be the bulldozer fitted with and FEL, commonly referred to as a "crawler/loader" and the purpose-built skid-steer loader. The regular FEL found on farm tractors, CUT's, sub-CUT's etc all the way down to the JBjr and the Sears Scoop are devices intended to transport materials that are already loose, such as topsoil, gravel, mulch etc that is in a pile sitting on the surface of the ground. As someone who owns two large rubber-tired FEL's, I can tell you that they are pretty useless when it comes to digging into virgin ground but fantastic when used to load trucks or carry materials from one location to another. The L-70 Volvo I have is a 2 1/2 cubic yard machine that weighs in at 14 plus tons and has over 160 hp. But it isn't an excavating tool. As such, I find it rather amazing and amusing that people purchase FEL's or JBjr's etc and are then disappointed to find that their 400 pound lawn tractor won't peel sod. The reason is quite simple. It's the wrong tool for the job. Most of you are smart enough to use a wide snow-shovel to shift snow and a round-mouth shovel to dig a hole in the ground. Both of these devices are shovels but they are designed to perform vastly different tasks. You wouldn't try to dig a hole in the soil with the snow-shovel anymore than you would clear your driveway with a round-mouth shovel. And that my friends, is the point....See Morecastoff
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