Reply to "rear axles"

AS someone mentioned, how you intend to drive will dictate the stub axle best for you. A PROPERLY welded. metal-sprayed or hard-chromed and reground axle will be as strong as a stocker and fit its bearings properly. A Wilkinson EN-19 replacement axle will be stronger, and a billet 4130-axle will be strongest- if you really need that much strength. In my experience, the only stub axles that break are those on cars where gigantic sticky rear tires are mounted, then driven hard at track events for long periods. Gumball racing tires will also break stock axles fairly quickly. And what separates is the axle flange from the shaft. Billet axles have triple-thickness flanges with a bigger radius, so pro-racers successfully use these. They have solid shafts, as someone mentioned, and are quite a bit heavier than stock but do accept stock bearings. If you're not racing weekly, a stock or especially a current replacement axle will work just fine, as long as its a press-fit into the bearings! Most original axles were loose fits into their bearings, which allowed the hard bearing races to work on the softer steel shafts. Finally, if you were curious, tapered bearings do not need a press-fit on the axle; in fact, its detrimental to the ease of working on them. Sealing issues, successfully locking the axle nut to the shaft at only 5-15 ft-lbs of torque needed by tapered bearings is problematic, and the auxilliary parts necessary to successfully run such bearings make these a poor choice for most Panteras. They eat a little more horsepower, and need periodic regreasing, too- just like front wheel bearings.