Bent AAM axle housing in my Dodge?

Howling

Howling

Soot Sniffer
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
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I pulled my '06 Cummins on last Friday night at the local fair.The next day I was going over the truck to make sure everything was good and noticed my carrier bearing was tweaked a little.(Bent toward the fuel tank).I also noticed that some contact was made at the lower passenger bedside opening by my tire.(rubbed some paint off).The driver side had no contact.

So I started to do some closer inspection and noticed the passengers side leaf spring perch looked like it made contact with the axle tube,or the axle tube flexed.

I got some pics of it but it is hard to make out.-

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Do you guy think it would be alright if I still drive this or should I be pricing a new axle.The truck only has 12,xxx miles:bang

Eric
 
Damn that sucks.

I try driving it. At this point what are you out trying.
 
Ok well the addition of good traction bars will help as well. The more I look at the pictures it looks as thow axle rap was the culprit
 
I would at least take the u-bolts out and put the center pin back into the perch and replace the u-bolts. Then drive it.

Jason
 
The center pin is still in place,I just took the ubolts off to get a better look.

In the pics I took just to be clear the perch and block still sit flat when the ubolts are in place.

We can not run traction bars or stops in our local pulling organization.The rules are some of the worst out there for a so called diesel class.

I have some 2" x 1/4 wall DOM tubing that I will be making some traction bars out of.Just not sure what to do about the axle.
 
w/out my bars my axle moved all over and actually destroyed the 2" blocks i had. at one point the rr tire was hitting the frt. of the wheel well and the lr was hitting the rear. i loosened everything up put it back where it belonged, installed the traction bars and it's been fine
 
Ouch man.

I wonder how many others out there have bent!!
 
What does the tube look like where it goes into the center section?? it is bent.. or rotated in the center section..
Can you clamp the springs?? Or put a piece of metal on the top of the spring, and clamp it to the front of the spring?? (just a thought..)
Bryan
 
Look closely you can see the housing is mashed/bent.
 
Eric did you get a chance to measure the axle tube out-of-round with your calipers yet?
 
Looks as if the axle tube was trying to rip its self off the spring perch and dented the axle tube. Going by the last pic you can see the sadle on the spring perch is behind the axle tube on the back side, and the axle tube is infront of the sadle on the front side. Take it to the dealer and see if they willl warranty that. Just tell them you had a heavy load going up a hill and noticed it started driving side ways lol.
 
XLR8R said:
Eric did you get a chance to measure the axle tube out-of-round with your calipers yet?
Click to expand...

Yes,I did up and down measures 3-15/16" front to rear measures 4-1/8" when the tube is suppose to be 4".

Going to put it on an alignment rack and see how bad it is.

Guess I will be looking for a new housing.

Eric
 
sorry to hear!, looks like maybe a little twisted on the perch, maybe slid back a bit, I dont think it probably hurt much though, might have to take both sides off, and straighten axle back out undernieth springs, and reset!...
for the record, If trac bars arent allowed {Which some pulls still wont allow, around here} I wont pull!, hell, run them anyhow, worst thing they can do is disqualify you.......
 
I had the same thing happen to my 03. Sucks just like your pic's the tube was bent or crushed a little and the axle tubes were rotated one forward and one backwards just a little. Traction bars now and welded the tubes to the housing.
 
Just like stovepipe said- I would definitely recommend welding the axle tubes to the housing. It would have most likely prevented your situation. It could have been worse- I've seen where the plug welds in the tubes bust and completely come out of the housing.
 
If you do weld the tubes to the housing, I wouldn't weld it all the way around. Maybe in teh front and back like a 2" long weld.

The tubes are designed to flex in the housing a bit. Welding all the way around... might cause it to be too rigid.

Been told this by a few folks. My brother included and he's an engineer that does metallurgy stuff for a living (designs guns)
 
nate said:
If you do weld the tubes to the housing, I wouldn't weld it all the way around. Maybe in teh front and back like a 2" long weld.

The tubes are designed to flex in the housing a bit. Welding all the way around... might cause it to be too rigid.

Been told this by a few folks. My brother included and he's an engineer that does metallurgy stuff for a living (designs guns)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure where gear teeth and splines are involved and supposed to stay meshed correctly and bearings are supposed to carry shafts you can't make something too rigid. Actually, they make girdles and braces to fix these problems, so I wouldn't take a gun engineers advice on axles... two totally different beasts. Just my 2 cents.
 
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