Yet another Article from the MASCOT, July - August 2008

The Worst Ever Botch Job? -  from Mike Hyman

Victor performed faultlessly, taking the bride to the church, and then transporting the happy couple to their reception at the Bridge Hotel in Frensham. But as he took up the drive to leave the hotel
for home, there was a clunk and a whirring noise - but no drive - typical of a half- shaft failure. This was rather disappointing, as I had checked the shafts only a few days before whilst fitting new hub oil seals, and there were no signs of any problems.  But at least the bride and groom were on hand to help load him onto the breakdown truck! And with the tools still around from the oil seal
job, it didn’t take long to remove the shafts.    But neither of them was broken, so what could have happened?  Closer inspection revealed some damage at the end of the splines on one of the shafts, where about 1/16” had been gouged off - could the trouble be in the diff unit?

Then I noticed the saw marks on the end of the shaft, and on checking the length, found that a good inch had been cut off!  So it would appear that whoever fitted this shaft (in aprevious existence) could not get the splines to go all the way into the diff sun wheel, so he cut them off, leaving only approx 1/16” of spline engaged.  This must have been before the car was taken off the road up to 50 years ago - the surprising thing is that it lasted so long!  I know that after the war there were many ‘repairs’ carried out to keep cars on the road that stretched ingenuity to its limits, particularly when spares were unavailable, but in almost 60 years of motor engineering I don’t think I have ever seen a worse case of botching a job. Have you?
                                                       Mike.

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