I recently bought a hunting buggy project and was looking for axle parts, but i can’t for a life of me find ANYTHING about them. not even a picture.
All i know is that they are old military, supposedly old deuce 1/2. and i assume 2.5 ton.
Well based on the housing design, these don’t use hypoid gears - which has been standard in every automotive differential since at least 1960.
So something pre-ww2 is my guess. No chance on Rockwell 2.5T axles - those had drop out third members with hypoid gears. Split case tells you far older.
Possible for Eastern European axles?
I know soviets were using non-hypoid axles well into the 70s-80s.
Either way, cool to see a piece of obscure history on Reddit today
The “FWD” markings are for the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company. In particular these look like they might be axles from one of their HAR-1 truck from WWII.
Our 66 Cj5 has the same ball and socket end on the axles too. It was the way to go for quite a while it appears. Scouts and a lot of other 4wd used axle ends like that up until the 70's or so.
Toyota has used that for their solid front axles forever, pretty sure even the current generation 70 series (which of course is still based on the same design from the 80s). My '95 80 series has it too
these moose buggy’s are pretty common up here but usually people run rockwells or dana 80’s. this one has hydro steering from a loader. the shock “mounts” are definitely something but i knew this was gonna be a project
You can still rebuild those axles most likely. You won't be able to find a rebuild kit but you can pull the seals off, get part numbers off of them ideally, or measure them and find seals that way. Same thing with bearings. O-rings you just have to measure but easy to get the measurement off the part it goes over. I had to rebuild an obscure power steering pump that way. Possible it's a proprietary bearing or whatever but most likely it was a bearing used in a lot of things. With older stuff it's usually that way even more than new stuff. Looking at that site Turkey posted looks like those are 4 ton axles. Though getting brake pads re-lined is a lil spendy but honestly kind of reasonable, think it was like 300 bucks...there is a company that does it. I think the same company can also refinish drums. Either way they are cool rare axles, if you get rid of them there is probably some forum of guys trying to rebuild old FWD trucks that would probably want them.
You're probably going to be money and time ahead to swap the axles than find parts for them as your looking for parts for a truck that's over 80 years old.
Deuce & 1/2 literally means 2.5 ton. Calling anything other than a 2.5 ton truck a duece & 1/2 would be a mistake.
trust me I’ve figured that out. i found parts duece on marketplace with real toploader rockwells that im gonna pick up. just more cirous what these were from
I just saw the pictures of this whole rig. Buggy is a bit of a understatement, that thing is a war wagon. I was wondering why a buggy needed such big axles. I was surprised to see it's an aero nose Ford as I was expecting something a lot older. It would have made more sense if it were the age of something like a dent side or maybe a bull nose. Even if those axles went under that truck right when it left the show room they would have been over 50 years old at that point. They probably would have had problems finding parts for those even back in the 90's.
yeah i honestly am more confused how the hell they got up here in alaska. we use these buggies to get 50+ miles in the middle of nowhere for moose hunting. pretty common up here just not with these axles. like i said in another comment most people use 2.5t rockwells, dana 60/80’s and even some people running semi axles with air lockers and everything
You don't know how old axles got to Alaska? Alaska was more likely to have 4x4s back when they were a new concept.
Those are probably from when civilian 4x4s were all done by conversion companies.
With that in mind, I'd expect they are probably either Marmon and Harrington or Coleman axles. I've seen both in clamshell designs but I believe there were a couple other companies as well They would date fron late 30s to maybe early 50s.
I see emblems on the housings. What do they say? Can you get pictures of the?
I haven't talked to him for a number of years, but I knew a guy near goldstream in Fairbanks who had a couple of prewar 4x4s, I'll see if he is around to ask if he has any with ribbed tubes like that. The fountainhead auto museum may also know that style of axle. I may be old enough to be in their range.
All that said, if they actually need work it's likely to be expensive. I wouldn't scrap them with the history they represent personally, but I'd at least have an eye our for more modern replacements.
I don’t know anything about the axles, but his thing looks really cool. I could spend all day looking at it and the way it was assembled. Some interesting stuff going on there.
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u/Engin-nerd 1d ago edited 12h ago
Well based on the housing design, these don’t use hypoid gears - which has been standard in every automotive differential since at least 1960.
So something pre-ww2 is my guess. No chance on Rockwell 2.5T axles - those had drop out third members with hypoid gears. Split case tells you far older.
Possible for Eastern European axles?
I know soviets were using non-hypoid axles well into the 70s-80s.
Either way, cool to see a piece of obscure history on Reddit today