[Bob Carriere]

HI Austin

None of us have had aby success planting/growing the proverbial money tree.....

Your first hurdle willbe to find a suitable R-Zeppa inner axle...... and no to the best of my knowledge parts are no longer available/produced. The reason they left the R-Zeppa design behind and went for a more easily mass produced axle was simply time/cost. The R-Zeppa is made like a fine watch... I doubt that you could mix and match parts that have been worn and even less if one has been parlty destroyed. The tolerances are way to tight.

Cost wise and ease of finding a complete replacement axle would from my expereince be much cheaper and easier to do.

AS a reference..... a R-Zeppa axle for an early 40 Dodge is listed at $150 USA $ juts for one side plus shipping, custom ect....... and if one is damaged there is a good chance the other side took a beating.

I am sure you can buy a complete Ford CMP axle for $200 / 250 complete with brake drums...... all it needs is to bolt back to the spring packs. Of course you would want to take it apart to clean the lub, regrease, and do the brake ( lining and wheel cylinders ) ......

You could probably just buy one steering knuckle for $150 including shaft for one side. But it is usually chepaere to buy the whoel axle than individual parts.

Please note that all above replacement axles will 99.99 % of the time have a different CMP bendix mass produced u-joint arrangement and NOT a R-Zeppa axle.

Let me share my expereince. My 1940 Chev CMP had one busted R-Zeppa axle and I had to buy, over a 3 year period, about 3 trucks and 2 spare axle before I could find one that had the proper inner R-Zeppa inner axle...... all in all my front axle became very expensive.

....and you have to literally take that axle apart to tell if you have the right one and few sellers will let you do that if you don't pay up front. BUT now I know better...... if you remove the cast iron hub cap on the front axle.... and using a dental pick.... feel around the center recess of the axle shaft..... remove the grease and try to feel for a threaded pattern in the center hole...... if it is deep threaded ( and very few are ) you have a R-Zeppa for sure. That thread has a deep deep recess set screw that is critical to the disassembly of the R-Zeppa cage for inspection and re-assembly. A long stem narrow shaft carburator flat blade screw driver is needed to do this deed.

If all you are concerned with is to get it mobile I would suggest you find either the complete steering knuckle to transplant or a complete CMP axle.

Bob C.