holywood3645 wrote:Gearbox, Do you have any pictures of the finished items you made from the VW items?
Can you provide any pictures of the modifications you made to the shafts to fit the 2 seater elan application.
Thanks
James
Hi James, The process is fairly simple, find yourself a set of used OEM VW Bug shafts from a late 60's early 70's vintage. The difference is that the OEM shafts had circlips holding the CV's on to the shafts. The Bug never really needed these so all the new versions do not have this feature.
I found a pair on ebay for $60.00 that were pretty dirty and greasy, but the shafts were in great condition.
The worst part of doing this job was disassembling the shafts, amazing how much grime and dirt accumulates over decades, plus the CV grease didn't help either.
The next step was to cut the shafts to size. I am using a pair of diff output shafts with CV cups and on the outboard side I have 1/2 inch thick aluminum adaptors, so I needed to have the shafts to be exactly 12" in length end to end. The shafts are hardened steel, so the surface of the shafts are incrediably hard. I used a die grinder to cut the shaft in half, and then trimed them to size, 6 inches, on the lathe. I also wanted to make a sleeve to ensure that the both halves would be concentric when welded together. Since the shafts are metric and all I had were SAE drill bits, I decided to mill down the shafts to 15/16", or 0.9375", by two inches on both shafts to accept the 4" sleeve.
I went a bit overboard with the sleeves, but I wanted to make sure it will hold. I used a 4" long 1.375" diameter steel rod. Drilled a 15/16" hole for a friction fit for the shafts, drilled and countsunk 6 holes for plug or rose welds. I also milled down a relief for the CV boots to lock into on both sides.
I Tig welded both ends of the sleeve to the shafts and weled up the 6 plug holes to the shaft. Pretty much bullet proof at this point, but I am told that you can also use 1/8" tubing with a 1" I.D., or butt weld the shafts together. I've seen a Formula B car with butt weled shafts and after years it has not yet broken. But I didn't trust my welding skills so went with some extra insurance.
The finished shafts. A bit of paint and they look brand new.
I opted for a new set of GNK Lobro CV joints and they came with new boots and bolts. Apparently there are alot of cheaper aftermarket CV kits out there, but for $262.00 for 4 complete sets of OEM CV's, why not.
- !BkdghLQ!2k~$(KGrHqEH-EMEs8kiCZUgBL(nf3Q-7g~~_1.jpg (22.69 KiB) Viewed 1502 times
Top picture is the Diff output shaft I bought on ebay and the guy also had the outboard adaptors. However, you can just make two adaptor plates for both sides for 1/2" thick aluminum, but these wrere nicely made, and for $388 shipped, it wasn't a bad deal.
I have this entire step by step project on my site at
http://thelolaregistry.com/Projects/LOT ... ersion.htm so you can check it out. Let me know if you need any help, Allan