Eagle Loader - new axles

[Rimrock]

I put out some pictures of my project fabricating new axles for my friends Eagle Dozer. Original axles where eating bearings for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so enough was enough.
I did modify some fully CNC machined aftermarket 1:Tamiya truck axles, that are made with a much higher precision than the original casted loader axles. And in addition they have bigger more solid gears, also precision machined. These are the axles I clearly prefer when building my own trucks, durable to a good price.
Needed to machine off 7-8 mm on each side of the axles. Did fabricated some connection brackets between new axles and the existing hubs. The existing shafts from diff to hubs/planetary gears fits the new axle as is. A bit more complicated to make the rear axle because of the support setup, so needed to make some more new parts there.
Finally the loader is moving longer than across the living room floor before bearing failure, at least)

[Rimrock]

A couple of more pictures

[Cooper]

Wow, some nice mods. The original axles just need a shim around the shaft bearing.

[Rimrock]

Thanks, we have tried the shimming option for 2 set's of original axles, put it didn't lasted for long for these specific axles. In addition to too big bearing support tolerances, the gears are more or less uneven castings or stampings. It seams just like a lottery, some axle is ok/repairable, many are not. Too bad Eagle did choose the casted truck axles as a starting point, and not the CNC machined ones. They are both available at about the same cost in many different webshops.
Well, hopefully the nightmare with axle troubles is over for this specific loader. Hopefully more fabricators will start compete in the same price range as Eagle, and they are forced to start using some better mechanics/hydraulics, and cut back on their profit.

[Lil Giants]

Originally Posted by Rimrock

Hopefully more fabricators will start compete in the same price range as Eagle, and they are forced to start using some better mechanics/hydraulics, and cut back on their profit.

What?!

[Rimrock]

Originally Posted by Lil Giants

What?!

Competition is good...don't you agree?) A loader costing 3000 USD which only stays 20 hours in parts on the workbench for each 1 hour of operation, will probably sell better than a 3000 USD loader which stays 50 hours in pieces on the workbench for each 1 hour of operation...?)

[thebigo]

Rimrock, are these locking diffs? Where did you get the axles from, Tamiya? Last question what connection bracket are you refering to?

Thanks
David

[Rimrock]

The axles are aftermarked parts for Tamiya trucks. I am very impressed of the overall quality level of the newest generation of these axles, at a good price. All parts CNC milled, and the gears and diff. seams the same as one would see in a good quality 1:10 RC car, fine engineering. I usually use www.wtbcar.com for purchase of different kinds of Tamiya truck 'hoop-up' parts, I am happy with their service and good prices. These are the axles I used for the loader, with diff. lock http://www.wtbcar.com/shopping/index...product_id=194
There are some other similar axles with a bit different design, I have not looked closer at them, but I would guess they are from the same fabricator, as they also have the ration of 1:3.09 . Most suppliers try to copy the 1:2.7 original Tamiya ratio into their axles. The same webshop also supplies the Armageddon Truck axles, yellow, which Eagle has got their axles from (with some modifications) It says 'Version 4' now in the webshop, so there has been done some modifications obviously...But if they are now at the same quality level as the 3.09 ration axles..? Who knows..I stay away from them, better like the design of the black anodized axles. I guess one reason why Eagle did go for the Armageddon axles as they are a bit more detailed on the outside. Anyway, it is said that fabricator is working at modifying the axles, so generation 2 will hopefully be better. Great..I hope they have success, and it will save dealers and customers for some head ache. There are also some other issues with the loader that they are working on to improve at the moment, but I don't know the details.

The 'connection bracket' (I don't know the best English word for it) is the part with the milled rectangular hole in one end, to connect to the new axle, and the other end is circular to connect into original wheel hub. There are some set-screw keeping all parts together. So we got away from the strange original design with 4 small internal hard to reach bolts that connected the wheel hub and original axles. This was another week link in the original axle setup. Quite a big job actually with the new axles, but I just needed to help my friend out of this 'head ache'. He got at first some new parts for the original axles from Eagle, but they were not any better than the original stuff. The loader costs 4000 USD incl. VAT in our country (2014), and it is naturally sad when things are not functioning as expected.

[thebigo]

Very good post Rimrock, and very helpful, i know these are very expensive when VAT is added for you guy's sorry for that. I found the axles you used, and am very glad that you mentioned the axle ratio for the diffs. I am going to contact Eagle ,for me RC4WD, and see when they plan on sending us the fixes, If they persist with the same old crap parts to fix I am definatly going to buy the Tamiya Modified axles and try and follow your machining pictures.

Thanks for the great Info
David

[liftmys10]

Nice job RimRock!

[Rimrock]

No problem David, I glad the info was helpful. If you, or anyone else, want to create the same set-up later on, I can come up with some sketches and more detailed info. But for now it's maybe better to keep it on hold a bit and see what improvements Eagle possible comes up with.