Taylor Race engineering bulletin

[Scotty]

Attention to all teams that have purchased Taylor Race Engineering halfshafts ...
INV-0200317 ( 10" to 14" prior to machining)
and
INV-0200318 (14" to 18" prior to machining)

This bulletin applies to those shafts purchased 8/20/2007 to present.and includes about 24 units of each part number.

A batch of axles produced in August 2007 was not properly heat treated.If properly heat treated the hardness will be Rc 53/55.
If not heat treated the hardness will be Rc15/26. We strongly suggest that any halfshafts purchased after August 20.2007 be checked for hardness prior to placing them in service.
Please e-mail me at scotty@taylor-race.com....or call me 972-422-0567 with any questions or concerns

[Scotty]

Attention to all teams that have purchased Taylor Race Engineering halfshafts ...
INV-0200317 ( 10" to 14" prior to machining)
and
INV-0200318 (14" to 18" prior to machining)

This bulletin applies to those shafts purchased 8/20/2007 to present.and includes about 24 units of each part number.

A batch of axles produced in August 2007 was not properly heat treated.If properly heat treated the hardness will be Rc 53/55.
If not heat treated the hardness will be Rc15/26. We strongly suggest that any halfshafts purchased after August 20.2007 be checked for hardness prior to placing them in service.
Please e-mail me at scotty@taylor-race.com....or call me 972-422-0567 with any questions or concerns

[Matt N]

To all running TR axles,

Just got off the phone with Scotty. He offered to replace both of our axles since we noticed this weekend that one machined MUCH, MUCH easier than the other.

Simple test - if you can machine the axles you have with HSS tooling it is definitely the non-heat-treated variety (one of ours was). The other axle, it machined the HSS tools. Had to go find carbides.

If you want to be able to sleep at night and know for sure, put straight paint lines on your axles for the first drive and see if they are still straight after the drive (not twisted).

Matt

[sc0tt]

We ran them on our car this past Saturday. Here are the results:

http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v193/210/99/14202545/n14202545_35935584_6744.jpg

http://photos-b.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v193/210/99/14202545/n14202545_35935585_7191.jpg

Talked to Taylor today and they are sending out new ones.

[Scotty]

Good point Matt....

With VIR coming up...
I want to make sure we get this taken care of ,and everybody runs.
So please test your axles. We will take care of the shipping if they are bad.

scotty


scotty

[Scotty]

scOtt.

Your axles left out today..
We sent them 2nd day so you will see them on Wed....

scotty

[rjwoods77]

It's no secret that I have love for Taylor Race Engineering but besides that it is real cool of them to step up to the plate on this one. A business more concerned with customer service than they are shoving shit out the door is one you always want to deal with. Customer service ALWAYS wins out over the new bright shiny next best thing. How did this come about Scotty? Bad oversite on your part or did a supplier screw you? Dont bother saying shit if it is too political.

[Scotty]

Thanks for the support Rob.
That really means alot to me bud.Customer service is our number one priority.

No need to get into details as of yet.
My main concern is to get everybody to check there axles.
I do not want to see a team come all this way only to have an axle failure that we had plenty of time to get sorted out.
Anybody in doubt needs to call me.

[Biggy72]

No offense to Taylor, but Rob this is something that I think they kind of had to fix. If you send out a product with as bad of an oversite as what happened here and then don't fix the problems you kind of tend to lose customers forever. When a customer base is relatively small and with a pretty constant group of people this tends to be important.

With that said I think Taylor does a nice job with customer service, but in this case it's more of something they just want to take care of.

[rjwoods77]

Biggy72,

This is something they could have let fly and said it was dumb engineering students who did something wrong which happens in the real world all the time. In their mind they had to but there is a ton of companies they just let stuff slide because their name holds more weight than a keyboard/forum warrior bitching about how something broke. The aftermarket parts market is rife with this behavior and not to many companies just accept the problema and deal with it. You are right however that if Taylor didnt step up and take care of it then the would be a bunch of d-bags ruining peoples hard work. So I give credit where credit is due for stepping up and doing the right thing. Anyway I dont think the fsae market for them is exactly a cash cow once you account for all the time that they spend on the phone walking people through simple mechanics of involute splined shafts. You think that they couldnt have just responded to broken fsae halfshafts with "We supply to real race cars for real race car teams. It must have been something you did." That is the stark reality of many companies out there.

[Patrick]

Hey sc0tt,

How much halfshaft angle are you running? RPI also experienced a halfshaft failure but the result looks more like this

http://kwwska.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pC67GTzKDN8Td11ogFoDFqCGoZP95JVl1_DoD2xCoDHWu9ii AeByYYDtYSIVyTJACe58HvvAsB7LsS9DwThItDZrDT0Xo3zwU/DSC00441.jpg


This occurred with about 9 degrees of inclination. Any ideas why we wouldn't see a more typical shear yield?

-Patrick DeGrosse Jr.

[Matt N]

Patrick,

did you have enough plunge under all conditions, especially full bump? Did you check axle length with the exact camber setting (or suspension setup) which you ran?

I'm guessing you hit a bump and "compressed" your axle.

[lporter]

Matt N,

We did have enough plunge throughout the suspension travel, we've been running Taylor halfshafts for 5 years and always check this before we run the car.

I agree with your observation, I also initially thought the axle was compressed due to a severe bump load, however this failure occurred after 4 laps around the skidpad at idle.

All of our halfshafts were tested today and this one came out at 15 Rc. The following day we bent the right side halfshaft (~14" long with 7 degrees of overall angle max) after 20 laps in the skidpad and one half-hearted launch. This halfshaft was tested at 17 Rc.

Any more thoughts would be appreciated.

[Scotty]

Levi.

It is the result of a un- heat treated axle.
They will come in all kinds of differant shapes.

You should see your new axles today.

[The Gus]

I'm rather surprised that two experienced teams left their driveshafts with so much loaded spline. You're at risk of breaking your driveshaft even with the correct heat treatment due to the stress riser associated with the spline. Not to mention the added unnecessary weight (which in this case, the added weight actually makes your part weaker). It's pretty simple stuff that should be done before the car ever leaves the garage. You might also notice on the lathe how easy the material is to cut, just like Western Washington did.

George

[GregUhlenhake]

Just wanted to provide everyone with a little data we obtained from an Indentron earlier today as we immediately tested our (2) 14" driveshafts for hardness. They have not been run as of yet, therefore, I have no observed shear twist. The hardness levels we found were 10.7 HRC for one driveshaft and 50.3 HRC for the second. We used a diamond tip for the testing.

I called Scott up at Taylor and they have overnighted a driveshaft to us so we can still do our test program this weekend. I cannot say enough about the customer service that they provide as it helped us avoid what could have been a pretty serious failure.

In regards to the extra splines, they will not cause a failure in a FSAE car as they are also used on numerous D-Sports racers that generate twice the horsepower and a fair amount of downforce. All they are is extra weight and can be removed as long as you have the correct tooling available.

I hope the data helps.

[Scotty]

Guys,

I really do appreciate you guys taking the time to call me just to let me know that you have tested your axles ,and they are OK.
Thanks for doing that.

[BamaJeff]

Scotty,

We got that axle today, as well as the plungers.

We also tested the other axle at Rc 49.9.

Thanks!