spindle material/hardness

[JDF]

What type of material do you make you spindles from and what type of heat treatment process do you use? I'm thinking 4140 somewhere around 50 RC. Sound right?

Thanks!

JDF
TTU

[JDF]

What type of material do you make you spindles from and what type of heat treatment process do you use? I'm thinking 4140 somewhere around 50 RC. Sound right?

Thanks!

JDF
TTU

[ben]

Ours are EN36 (I don't know what the equivilent SAE spec is - sorry) with integral tripod housings.

As for hardening - Xtrac are hardening them this week so I'll report back on this.

Ben
www.ubracing.co.uk (http://www.ubracing.co.uk)

[Julius]

I worked for a company that specialized in gears and shafts. We never used 4130 for anything. Most of our shafts were 4340. I think if you look up the properties of this material, you'll find it is best suited for, and is the most common material for shafts.

As an aside I also remember Carrol Smith in one of his books mentioning that you shouldn't use 4130 for driveshafts...it's somewhat similar.

I'm not 100% sure on 4140 though.

Good Luck

[Schumi_Jr]

4340 has much better hardenability than 4130 because of (I believe) increased nickel content. This is desirable since your spindle is relatively thick. You should get more uniform properties after ht and can use a less agressive quench.

Aaron Johnston
University of Waterloo FSAE

www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~fsae (http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~fsae)