Narrowed Wraith axles... the easy way

[Chris_The_Battery_Man]

Hey all,


Wanted to post up something I figured out on narrowing these wraith axles. I did 1 on my lathe a while back, but pondered an easier method, and came up with this.


For those that don't know, this is being applied to my sportsman build. I will also be selling these housings on my site once I confirm they are strong. This mod takes 1 inch of width out of the housing. It is a hair narrower than a front XR10 axle.


My build:

CreationFab Resurrects La Licorne Fatale!

My site:

CreationFab - Crawler Accessories and Custom soldering Services



Lets get started


First thing I do is take the housing to my bandsaw, and cut as evenly as I can at the back side of the splines. I then cut the rest off at the edge of the lower link mount. Once I do this, I take the housing and end to my bench sander to make both sides perfectly square.

Here are pics of both sides once cut





Now that this is done, I get my materials. JB Weld, and some 11/32 brass tubing. The brass tubing is a tad smaller in diameter than the inner diameter of the wraith housing. In fact the long side is a bit tighter further in, and it fits nice and snug. The short side has a little wiggle, but the JB Weld fills that.




After measuring, I cut the long side to about 80mm, and the short side to about 23mm. Cleaned up the burrs, and made sure they were fairly square




Now I mix a little JB Weld. Took a piece of a small zip tie that was cut, and used it to apply the JB Weld to the inside of the tubes. As I inserted them, I twisted it, and slowly put it in. Had to pull it out, and apply some to the tube so it would fill the gaps. Took my time on this to make sure there was enough on the inside. I left axprox 8mm off the end. I wanted to make sure that the brass would come a hair from the back side of the bearing. Make sure to look into the housing, and see if the tube pushed any excess JB Weld in the way of anything, and clean the excess up.




Now I applied some JB Weld to the remaining tube, and faces of the housing and splined end. Wanted to make sure all surfaces being bonded together, got enough. This axle is going to be a passenger drop on my sportsman, so I rotated the splined end back 1 spline to allow me some more caster. Stock, the housing has a seam that runs across the top and bottom from the injection mold process. The hole to keep the Chub in place, is lined up with this. So I just rotated it back to the next spline. I go and check on it every 10 mins or so to make sure the JB Weld hardens and the caster is exact. It does move some, so keep a careful eye on that.





Hope this is helpful to some of you DYI'ers. I will post more once the JB Weld Dries. There will need to be some holes drilled since the tube covers some of them.

[TSK]

Saw this in the AX thread first, but to repeat, good job on it man. Looks super clean and near factory in the pics. I was kinda wondering what you had up your sleeve when you showed me the teaser this morning

You gonna cut some XR axles shafts to length for these?

[Chris_The_Battery_Man]

No, I guess the HighlandCrawler Berg universals are direct drop in's

[TSK]

Originally Posted by Chris_The_Battery_Man

No, I guess the HighlandCrawler Berg universals are direct drop in's

Ha! F'n sweet.

[BC Racing]

?.....so where do your links attach.

[2500hdon37s]

Originally Posted by BC Racing

?.....so where do your links attach.

looks like he still has the stock mounting holes that the link and shock mount piece bolts to.

[Charlie-III]

Looks good as well as "easy" to do.

As to the "bits moving", when I used to do similar, I would stretch a wide rubberband to go from end to end to hold thiongs still. It would keep the splines from sliding off as well as twisting.
I save the rubberbands from the post office, they work well. Just get the band started over one end of the axle, stretch to fit the rest of the axle and hook across the far end. Tweak alignments & walk away.

[tedo]

Any more news on these?

[Chris_The_Battery_Man]

Not at the moment. I am in the process of moving, and busy at work. So all the RC projects are on hold until I get my new garage and office setup.

[rocksteadily]

Hey man, have you got any updates on this? Possibly a complete axle
Setup with links am shocks all attached? I like the looks of this and would possibly like it on myscaler

[JavelinSST390]

So how wide do these end up, hex to hex? I'd love to give this a shot, I need to match a set of OCP60's to the width of wheely king axles.

[MadMoose]

Im interested as well to know what axle shafts you use. I plan on doing this to my wroncho.

[rocksteadily]

Originally Posted by JavelinSST390

So how wide do these end up, hex to hex? I'd love to give this a shot, I need to match a set of OCP60's to the width of wheely king axles.

I did a set following these instructions and the hex to hex comes out to about 8 5/8"

Originally Posted by MadMoose

Im interested as well to know what axle shafts you use. I plan on doing this to my wroncho.

I used wraith universals cut down and reground the flats. It's pretty easy to do.

Btw, thanks Chris the battery man for this write up!!!

[MadMoose]

Thank you i was worried i would have to buy new axles.

[JeremyH]

Originally Posted by Chris_The_Battery_Man

No, I guess the HighlandCrawler Berg universals are direct drop in's

Seriously?

[MadMoose]

So those that have done this are they on comp rigs or scalers cause that's what im doing a set for and dont want to worry about them coming apart.

[PSYCHO-JLO]

Update?

[usslandlocked]

yes lets see the progress

[douglastee]

Like, is this do up for rear axles?

[adbradwell]

no update yet?