Morris Minor Owners Club

G,day all
Phil – I removed my axles and measured the bearing protrusion beyond the hub alone and it was 10 thou one side and 9 thou the other. The seals and seal surfaces on the ends of the housing were perfect. The paper washers in the area where they had been compressed by the wheel nuts was 15 thou both sides. This means the outer race of the bearings was short of being gripped between the hub and axle flange by 5 thou one side and 6 thou the other. One bearing had quite a lot of free play, the other seemed OK. This is after a little over 2500 miles on the new bearings. Rather than take any chances I fitted new 6207 2RS bearings, used the same Dow Corning High Vacuum grease to initially lubricate the seals as was done before and the void between the seal and bearing was ½ packed with Castrol HTB grease which is my preferred bearing grease. I made paper gaskets from 7 thou material which would give a protrusion from the hub and gasket of 2 thou one side and 3 thou the other which complies with the workshop manual. I am not concerned about the gaskets being a little short of filling the gap between the hub and axle flange – the O rings will take care of this. After seeing the axle failure in the link in my post of Dec. 9 2014 under mechanical – ‘Rear axle and bearing and oil seal gap’ I gave the matter some thought and decided to fit two brand new old stock EN 17 axles I had in my spares box. They were covered in surface rust so I bead blasted them and found the wording very shallow and probably rolled onto the shafts ‘REGENT 146 MADE IN ENGLAND’. My understanding is that standard Minor axles were EN8 which has an ultimate tensile strength of 700 mP as against 1130 mP for EN17. The attached link shows that the Regent company was acquired by Kirkstall Forge Engineering in 1964.
Cheers Bob

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Kirkstall_ ... ngineering

Bob
Many thanks for coming back to us with a review of how you have done and fared so far.
Interesting info about the EN17 half-shafts and thanks for the link.
The bead blasting will/may enhance the performance of the half-shafts as well as it may have put a hardened skin on them. It seems to work on and benefit engine components.
Let us know how you get on.
Phil

How do you know it's EN 17 steel? A friend of mine who used to work as QC Manager at Kirkstall remembers a subsidiary perhaps Regent who used to make some gears for them.... He assure me that in his time with the Co they didn't make Minor halfshafts - he had two at the time - and if such a thing had been available he would have 'tested' them on his cars !

Hi to all
Roy the axles had EN17 on the domed end which the brake drum fits over. It was not stamped but raised as would be done during forging. The other markings on the shaft were very shallow as if rolled in. I guess this was done so as not to stamp the markings deeply, from which a fault could propogate. I quoted the markings "REGENT 146 MADE IN ENGLAND" in the hope that someone had old references to regent part numbers.
Cheers Bob

Ok thanks Bob ! Seem to be quite unique - treasure them carefully.