Bent Ujoint ears... now what?

[dbabicky]

Water will harden and make more brittle, oil won't

 

[BGKYK5]

I could be wrong, but IIRC water is more severe, but oil does the same thing to a lesser degree.

 

[Metalhead47]

Ho boy Now I've gone & started a metallurgy debate. I only wanted to fix my ears, really!

 

[Hogback Fabrication]

Ho boy Now I've gone & started a metallurgy debate. I only wanted to fix my ears, really!

Seems like we covered that


Quenching steel in oil will make it much more brittle. If you were intentionally trying to make a steel part very brittle you would heat it up and drop it in oil.

Heat (once a part is sent off of the assembly line and delivered to the end user) is generally a bad thing. All you can do is hurt the part (unless the part you had was not heat treated and you have the equipment to heat treat the part).

If the part was not heat treated, adding heat (i.e. a torch) to help remove a pressed in part (i.e. u-joint) will probably not hurt it so long as you don't quickly quench it in something (i.e. water or oil).

 

[dbabicky]

I will go double check my facts, but right or wrong I will respond with what I come up with. I must go research this through the #1 Machine shop in the Air Force. I still have connections there.

 

[Mudstud]

I had cut one joint outta my 60 shaft cuz it wasn't moving. Once I put the new joint in place I couldn't get the c clip on one side. I figure I bent the ear some so I removed the joint and comensed beating the ever liven sh!t outta that one ear till I could get it back in place. It was tight but I got the c clip installed. Now I have a creaking joint someplace in the truck and fear it is my new joint that got ate up with unequal stress being applied to it.

 

[dbabicky]

Alll right here's the skinny on the heating and cooling of the yoke,according to one of the top metalurgy engineers the USAF relies on. I was only partly correct. You should heat it up to the point where you can just get it to move, Kind of a straw color in the metal. shape it back then dip it into a bucket of HOT oil and swirl it around in the oil until the part is cool. According to him that is the best way to preserve the integrity of the metal. Once you install the u-joint, check that you have free movement on the joint, if it's really stiff, tap the yoke at a 45 degree angle with a hammer around the yoke toget a nice consistant movement of the u-joint.