It has been a while, a week long trip, a two day autocross, but I have been working too. The donor is disassembled and the corpse removed. I am cleaning parts and putting together the axles etc.

As Rasmus wrote in his build thread, it would be nice to cut the CV housing off the front spindles. Easier said than done since the steel is hardened, not super hard, but harder than a normal axle to keep the wear in the CV down. Ideally a cut off saw with abrasive wheel could be used, but I don't have one. A band saw blade wouldn't last long, and even a carbide cutter in the lathe was going to take forever.

So, I chucked the spindle in the lathe, and then used a hand held die grinder with a cut off disc, and by spinning the spindle and cutting, it only took about 15 minutes per to cut the part through right behind the gears for the ABS sensor. Then I used a carbide cutter to turn the gears off and face the end.

From the pics in the manual, I guess this is approximately what Factory Five did.

spindle.jpg

john