Avantages of removing fornt drive shaft?

[Warren Lovell]

Since I mainly drive my Deuce in town, I was wondering what benefits I would gain by removing the front drive shaft?
Also, what advantages do the selectro hubs offer?

Thanks,

Warren

 

[rdixiemiller]

Warren
If you have an air shift transfer case (you should, in a '75), there is no advantage in removing the shaft instead of unlocking the front hubs. You can install Selectros, ($550 a pair or so), or you can get a spare set of front drive flanges and having the splines machined out. That has the same effect as putting on Selectros, just cheaper. Selectros, however, are easier and quicker to lock and unlock, rather than changing drive flanges.
The advantages of freewheeling hubs (however you do it) are:
1) Less parasitic drag from turning all the axles and gears in the front diff., plus the front drive shaft.
2) Less wear on said front diff. and drive shaft.
3) Somewhat improved steering response.
4) On long road trips, you should see a slight improvement in fuel economy.

I am running a set of desplined flanges on my deuce. Eventually, when my ship comes in, I am upgrading to Selectros.

Another mod that has been discussed in detail in the past is pulling one rear axle shaft. You put a front drive flange on in its place. this really improves turning in town.

 

[Djfreema]

The cost versus gain in my opinion arent worth it. Youll never wear out your front end from driving around without the front axle engaged. If your commuting 20,000 miles a year at 10 mpg, youd spend $5000 dollars a year in fuel at $2.50/gallon. If you were able to bump your fuel milage up to 11 mpg youd spend $4545/year. I dont think theres anybody out there with a kidney and time to drive 20,000 miles a year in a duece and a half unless your superman! I dont think I'll ever put 10,000 miles on my duece in a 10 year period. I would take that money and get air assist steering or do the selectro mod on the rear axle. I havent actually done either mod but the money would be better spent on a more needed mod. My next purchase is going to be air assist steering, I do too much city driving and turning to be without it, plus I dont like getting swamp butt from working a sweat doing a 5 point turn in my culdesac. I am not as fortunate to live in the great wide open! Just my 2 cents.

 

[Desert Rat]

WL,

I'm getting a set of selectros for free from Ken here in Houston because they do not have any kind of water resistance. If you live in an area of the country where it's flood prone and you wish to drive in this environment I do not recommend the selectros. There is only one thin gasket between the selectro hub and the wheel bearing. This gasket is to small to be effective as a water deterrent. The only reason why I'm pondering putting the selectros on is to experiment with the gasket to see if I can come up with a better solution to the gasket problem. Right now I'm running desplined hubs from Robert (rdixiemiller) to help with some steering and fuel economy issues. I bought the hubs from Howard Hammond in Greenville,KY and sent them to Robert for desplining. It has cost me $30 between the purchase and shipping on these hubs. Due to the fact my transfer case was one of those ugly sprages I'm having to work on a bunch of driveline and steering issues later on this fall. Because of this I dropped my front drive shaft to eliminate the binding I was getting from the *#@!^*%@!!!! sprage. At home in Indiana I went from 7.2 to 8.4 mpg by simply dropping the shaft. Since I'm setting up my truck to be a road truck 95% of the time I'm not too concerned at this time to reinstall the shaft. Another issue the sprage binding put on the truck is the steering box and the controling arm from the pitman arm. Both will need to be rebuilt because the stress put on the bushings has caused damage and I have some slop in the steering as a result. It's not severe just yet but will get that way if nothing is done. This too also adversly impacts fuel economy but in a small way.

Unlike Devin I'm putting on about 7,000 miles on my truck this spring and summer in the process of moving from Indiana to Texas. I have a spring seat (LOVE it) with full soft foam. I can drive for 12 hours or so without feeling uncomfortable. I used to drive a city truck in Evansville, IN and the military spring seat is more comfy by far. If you have the opportunity to buy one I strongly suggest to do so.

Deuces are also impacted by weight and rolling resistance when looking at fuel consumption. My example is in the first trip down here to Houston I had two trailers behind my truck and grossed #29,000 exactly with full dual tanks of fuel (100 gallon total draw capacity) and me inside. I came close to 6.5 mpg overall. I knew I would drop mpgs when I observed I was slowing down on downhill grades and actually having to accelerate to keep up with the flow of traffic. Of course having a brake shoe on one of the trailers slowly hang up on me didn't help matters either. More on that in another thread.

So, in conclusion, is the purchase of a set of selectros worth the money, expense and problem? It depends upon the application. For me if they weren't free I'd say not really because of the leak issues. You would need to drive for quite some time to recoup your investment. So far I have driven my Deuce 8,000 miles in 20 months or so of owning it. I will have driven it about 14,000 miles by the end of July since owning it. Driving her at this rate I would make up the cost of the selectros sometime this year if I actually bought a set.

I hope this helps.

 

[rdixiemiller]

Popping one rear axle shaft, or pulling the interaxle driveshaft will probably help turning as much as anything. I didn't realize how much until I turned around in a parking lit that was covered in sand. The rear tandem broke free and the turning effort and radius dropped significantly. Since then, I popped the right rear axle shaft and put a drive flange in its place. I don't notice enough steering effort to bother with power steering yet. The singles seem to help. If I had a heavy load, that might change.

 

[cranetruck]

When it's all over, you will probably come to my conclusion that when removing the stub axle (or one of the drive flanges in the rear), it's best to keep the front drive capability intact. I like the standard setup since when needed, I just flip the switch to engage front wheel drive.
While at Aberdeen, someone pointed out that with just one driving axle and a light load, it's possible that the driving tires will wear faster due to tire hop. I'm keeping an eye on it.
The front tires wear a lot less, though.

 

[Monster Man]

I'll chime in since I've done both (front axle and rear axle). After many miles of testing, I've come to the conclusion that the front shaft is not worth pulling unless your sprag is malfunctioning like mine and you have to worry about it dropping in at 5th gear. Anyhow, I noticed NO decrease in drag or increase in acceleration or decrease in road noise or trouble getting up to speed. All I noticed was that the truck slowed down less quickly without the front axle dragging it down. However, even with front axle and rear axle out I still only get 7.5 MPG, but that's with exclusively city driving. On the highway I bet that number goes way up. With axles in on a 420 mile trip I averaged 10 MPG.

The rear axle out REALLY helps turning, but there's a major disadvantage- it burns up middle tires like no tomorrow! They have no traction and almost every start from a stop I'm smoking tires. Not fun, especially since I have to park uphill in my driveway. That means I need a good start at it. I think I may put the rear axle back in, I figure I couldn't use any more gas than I already am, plus I'll be burning up tires more evenly

 

[rdixiemiller]

I have noticed that I spin my middle tires. I already put my rear axle shaft back in. It helps the turning, reduced vibration a little, but didn't really help my highway driving. I don't have too much city driving, so it wasn't a help to me.

 

[M543A2]

We have found that with the way the torque arms are set up, pulling an axle on the front rear axle works better than pulling one on the rear rear axle. If it is the front one driving, it tends to lift and traction is lost. If the rear axle is driving, it seems to set into the road better under power and less slip results. Think of how the four link suspension works on a race car, and you get some idea of why it works this way.

 

[Monster Man]

I'll switch those tonight and doa little testing. Never though of that, just assumed the middle one would have better traction since more weight is over it. I'll also test to see if the turning radius is affected, middle axle pulled vs rear axle pulled vs both in.

 

[ken]

Pulling the front drive shaft by it's self with a air shift won't help a bit. Every body is still turning. If you go with the lockouts and a air shift you will see a big difference! My truck came with a sprag(thank god it's gone!) After switching to the air shift and the lockouts i can drive with one hand. DRAT can tell you how easy my truck steers now. Devin mentioned that you would never wear out the front axle. I had to replace the pinion bearings and seals from the sprag binding. The spindle bushings were also wore to the base metal. Now that they only turn when i'm off road they should last forever. As far as the selectro's go, they work great and seem to be quite strong. But if you go in the mud they are useless!! The tiny o-ring under the knob is a JOKE!

 

[Djfreema]

When I made my post I was thinking everybody had an airshift like me. Never thought of the sprag type and all the problems people have with them. Now I see why somebody would want to pull their front driveshaft.

 

[Desert Rat]

Devin,
Much like I have with my cursed sprag, soon to be remedied with an air shift!

 

[Recovry4x4]

Intersting subject! I just went 2221 miles on one axle. Other than getting stuck at the truck stop I've noticed no ill effects. Like Bjorn says, if you keep the front flanges in place, a simple flip of the lever gets you unstuck and unembarrassed.

 

[JohnnyReb]

How, pray tell, did you get stuck at a truck stop?

How did you get unstuck? This one we have to hear!!

 

[Recovry4x4]

You can read in detail about it in the MV Trips forum but in a nutshell, I was going up about a 1% grade out of the truckstop when a bus stopped in front of me. With the NDts wet blacktop ond only one axle driving, I was stuck. Had to wait for traffic to clear and back down the hill to get a running start.

 

[Desert Rat]

Yep folks, Kenny's at it again! I presume you stopped at the sign. I can't imagine you would do a rolling stop......................

 

[Recovry4x4]

I didn't stop at no sighns and wouldn't have stopped if there was enough room to get around the bus. I knew the possibility was there to get stuck. Need a Detroit in that axle.

 

[cranetruck]

This happens a lot to me too, driving on gravel roads, across curbs, on wet pavement etc. That's why I gave up on freewheeling the front wheels. The air operated front wheel drive comes in handy more than once on a typical trip.

 

[Desert Rat]

Kenny,
I'm just playing with ya. I was hinting at your other profession (other than working on Deuces and Pipelines).