Axle F(inished)

Measuring the rear axle showed that there was an alarming amount of toe out (0.5deg), so we attempted to straighten it. First off we tried to just apply some strips of weld which in theory contract the metal and cause it to bend. We tried this with no bending moments applied and nothing happened. So then we lashed up the setup shown below

So by pumping up the bottle jack the pressure was applied to both ends of the axle via the chains and would bend the axle. We attached laser pointers to each hub so we could then measure the movement of the axle on the roof of the work shop as we applied pressure/heat. The difference in the starting width and required finishing width was calculated to get the correct toe. We noticed that applying just pressure seemed to do the trick as the axle wasn't springing back, and so (we thought) the axle was setup with 0.4deg toe in

Unfortunately the patches of oil you can see in the photos (taken the day after the "axle straightening" session") weren't from the diff breather as we first thought! When dad started to clean up the axle he noticed that there was a huge crack in the back of the axle casing!! This had obviously been caused by the bending of the axle and explained why it moved so easily. But in our defence, the axle had actually cracked along a horrible welded up repair on the axle casing which had been previously hidden by some foam that protected a brake pipe!!! It also suddenly became obvious that the camber i had measured may have been at the desired 0.5 degs negative, but it was all on one side, the axle tube was very badly bent on the offside, no wonder that bearing always leaked!!!!!!  So the axle casing was scrap and we needed to build up a new one, eeeeek!!!