I would ask im but he died three years ago. I should also have said he was
ex-GM. He left GM in the late 70's to run a successful Sprite parts,
repairs and performance tuning business, where he died in harness. I
should also have said that my friends car was a standard road bugeye on
standard road radials. On our cars we've never run anything but road
tyres, the widest being 165/70.
I'm no engineer but I would have thought that a force on the spindle would
be countered by an equal and opposite reaction on the spacer converting the
shear force on an unsupported spindle to tension on a supported one. I
would have thought that the spindle would be stronger in tension than in
shear and that's why I stand by what I (and Bob) said.
Peter
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From: David Ramsey <dwramsey@worldnet.att.net>
To: Angela Hervey-Tennyson & Peter Westcott <toobmany@bigpond.com>
Cc: spridgets@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Front Wheel Bearings...
Date: Monday, 10 May 1999 6:49
Please ask your GM engineer why placing the axle in a state of tension
reduces the bending moment stresses? Also why placing the hardned bearing
races in a state of compression with a spacer adds strength to the system?
This goes against everything I learned in strenghts of materials or in
Mechanics of Materials, 3rd Ed Gere/Timoshenko. If anything an axle in
tension has less resistance to bending moment stresses! Racers have broken
axles for years, thats why they buy the high strenght axles, it has nothing
to do with if they have spacers or not. The repeated high bending moment
stresses that they place on the axles with big sticky tires is why they
break. By the way I have run timken tapered cone rolller bearings with no
spacer in my street bug-i for many years with no problems. Sorry guys,
just had to say it!
Crash
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