A Light Recovery Trailer from Downunder

[Sam Scholz]

Continuing the axle straightening, here is the setup described in the previous post.

LRT Set up to straighten the axles. 10 2023.JPG


One axle was also slightly bent forwards, dunno how that happened. So I could jack it from the rocker.

LRT Side straightening the axle. 10 2023.JPG


One question was how to know when the axle was straight, or straight enough. An engineer I know suggested the method in the picture below, however I ran into a problem I have seen before. That is that the whole assembly is so battle-weary that there is not anywhere straight enough to take accurate measurements from!!!
So, while this method is quite accurate, I couldn't make any sense out of it due to the imperfections in the axle. I ended up using a combination of a straight edge and eye.

LRT Attempt to measure the straighted the axle. 10 2023.JPG


The first axle I attacked was the worse one. I often do it that way so that they get easier as I do each one. The last two hardly took an afternoon!
And here is the finished job. Part of the preparation was disassembling all the brakes, which is the next part of this story.

LRT All 4 axles straightened a 10 2023.JPG


Time for a sit down and a nice cup of tea.
Have a nice day.
Sam.