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Half shaft replacement

ScottTR6

Senior Member
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I sheered a half shaft last night in my 1960 Sprite. I've got a spare, but have never attemted a replacement before. I've got wire rims, any pointers or things I should avoid? Thanks, Andrew.
 
You likely sheared it off at the spline which means you'll have to pull the pumpkin to get the "nub" out..... So, pull the good half shaft first, then the pumpkin and extract the remnant of your axle from it. Clean out all of the metal shavings (there will be lots of them.) I used a rare earth magnet to gather up most of them. Then you put it all back together.

I did it on my Rostyle '79 without too much headache, getting the nub out was a pain. I ended up drilling an tapping a screw into the nub and then yanked it out with a vice grip.


I'm an amateur at best so if I can do it, anyone can.
 
On fire trucks we made a lasso out of lock wire to remove the stubs. Of course they were about 2 to 3 inches in diameter.
 
I thought i had broken a half shaft one Day. Turns out the shafts were fine, it was the pile of broken spider gears in the bottom of the housing that was my problem.


m
 
If you have wire wheels on a BE did you do the conversion? Wire wheel axle shafts are shorter than disc axle shafts. If the original housing was used and the axles were not pressed partly out of the hubs you have very little spline engagement in the diff and shearing them is to be expected.
This was just discussed on the autox list. My opinion is to find a correct 1/4 eliptic axle housing or modify a later wire wheel housing to the 1/4 eliptic setup. If you press the axle shafts partly out of the hubs you risk the shafts working loose later on in the hubs.

Kurt.
 
It's quite possible that you just broke the shaft at the hub, If so, it's easy to replace. Worst case, you'll have to take the hub off. But when mine broke, I was able to grab the end with my fingernails. It slides out.

More important is what you replace it with. Bugeye axles are notoriously weak. You can get axles from a later Spridget, which should be OK, or racing axles if you are really concerned about it. The replacements I used were the BTA806 type; these are a pretty common replacement. There are others, though; do a search and you'll find a lot of postings about this.
 
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