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Tack weld rear axle shaft, retainer plate stud, now or wait?

6K views 20 replies 11 participants last post by  abendx 
#1 ·
When installing a new pair of chromoly rear axle shafts in my D44, I over-torqued one of the studs of the driver rear retainer plate.

It is plenty tight to drive as is.

However, in the future, when I need to remove the nut, I'm going to have to tack weld the stud to the plate from inside or cut the stud off from the nut side from the back.

I could reach in to stick weld it, or I could use my MIG with the wire spooled out far enough.

I am concerned about over-heating the seal and/or splattering in there while doing a tack weld. This leads me to want to wait until I have to pull the shaft.

I am also concerned about being on the trail, busting an axle, and not being able to pull and replace it until I return to somewhere I have access to a welder. This leads me to want to tack weld it now.

Up until now, I have only bent rear chromoly shafts and blown rear ring teeth. I'm thinking that it is less likely that I break a rear shaft on the trail. If I blow ring teeth, I'd pull my rear driveshaft and drive/winch/pull off the trail in front wheel drive. I could then find access to a stick welder to tack it so I could pull the shaft.

Certainly, I'm not the only one who has spun a retainer plate stud.

Who has an opinion other than "bacon" or to just carry some welding sticks and link batteries?


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#4 ·
So. Stick or MIG? What would you use? The stud head on the plate is kind of hard to reach in there. I don't want to spatter and melt the rubber on the axle seal.


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#9 ·
K. It's settled.

MIG with the wire spooled out enough to reach in there, wet rags for cover of the other stuff, 2 tacks on the head.

And...next time, go ahead and tack the studs to the retainer plate whenever I have an uninstalled shaft.


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#10 ·
Tack all four on both sides Plan..... I recently broke a rear shaft on the Rubi44 I had back there and when it came time to replace, two of the four studs spun on one side and when I checked the other side, one spun there too.... all from the factory and I had never screwed with that area of the Jeep.

So.... I would do all eight just to be on the safe side.... while getting in there with grinder or Sawsall is possible, they might not be common trail tools and who wants to deal with that if you don't have to.
 
#17 ·
I was going to look at how to pull the e-brake gear off to be able to reach it more easily.

The wife and I are headed to Cabo San Lucas for a week though, and I won't get around to it until a week from Saturday.


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#21 ·
Locktite will do nothing for this issue.... the issue is that the pressed-in stud or backing plate must made from some soft metal and the "threads" strip; thus, you end up with a spinning stud that is useless for anything as there is no head behind it to grab onto.... at that point you are going to have to tack it like PLAN is planning on or cut them off as I had to.

I think the weld method is way better and if I had that ability, I'd have gone that route as well.
 
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