rear axle casing bend?

[Stuart Giles]

If you don’t mind resorting to a bit of agricultural engineering of the budging kind, I’ve straightened an axle wit a bend like that with ratchet straps, a length of scaffold pole and a bottle jack!

with the bend so close to the end, how would one create the jig to put a bottle jack in?

That close to the backplate you're going to need a press, and I suspect a big warm spanner.

something like this setup is all you'll need if you are using heat.



The F750 racer axle above was straightened 'hot' - the actual bend was caused by the welded on 4 link brackets; the racer/owner found that the car was killing wheel bearings in short order. Oxy Acetylene/Oxy propane heat applied on the inside of the bend with the jack pressing against the outside of the bend. You'll only need a small spot of dull cherry red on the inside of the bend and a small amount of force will move it. I have done truck axles with a tube wall thickness of 1/4" plus with this same setup.

If you find you need some 'fine tuning' after hot straightening and axle case as above, applying a bead of stick or MIG weld on the outside of the bend will pull the axle straighter as the weld cools. Obviously you will need 100+ amps or so to push in plenty of heat when you do this. Grind the weld off afterwards without putting in too much heat and the new 'set' will stay in place.