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Saracen or ferret lockout hubs

B3.3T

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Each hub in both vehicles has a reduction gear system. Very complex with a lot of parts. Locking out a hub would be complicated as well.
 

teletech

Active member
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santa cruz,ca
Also, at least for the ferret, it's a bad idea to run on just 2 hubs/bevel boxes. People have pulled the shafts and later regretted it when they blew a bevel box or planetary.
Are we sure those wheel stations weren't compromised for other reasons? They do tend to leak like crazy so I can imagine dry stations overheating and dying. I just bring it up because the torque from driveline wind-up can be pretty terrifying in these and seeing/hearing them slip tyres as a result makes it seem unlikely that normal road loads exceed that.
My guess is on hard-dry pavement 2 stations are better and in the dirt with variable loads it very quickly becomes far better to run four.
It might be possible to fit some sort of dry or wet coupling to two of the driveshafts to let things slip just a bit but more likely I think would be modifying two of the propeller shafts with a couple rows of needle bearings and pins. The former would reduce stress on wheel stations, the latter is a lot less fabrication, though still not trivial.
 

patracy

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If you feel the reward outweighs (literally weight) the risk, by all means, disconnect them. None of the vehicles in question are light. I'd rather have the load spread between the front and rear wheels on a side than relying on just a pair of the rears. I know from what wheel station work I've done, the planetary gears aren't all that large. The bevel boxes don't appear to have that large of a gear either.
 
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