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just wondering

m8magicandmystery

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just wondering why i can remember in my heavy duty wrenching days that i used to put a long snipe on my one inch drive ratchet and one or two guys pulling on the pipe or one bouncing on the pipe exerting probably easy close to 1500 hundred foot pounds..???

just wondering why those little gears in that ratchets head stood up to the tremendous load for most times..

just wondering why in this day and age drive systems in sleds with big gears and big shafts only 130ish ft pounds torque seem to break often..??
 

Vern

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hyrum utah
I've used a hammer against the handle of a ratchet before for a little extra manipulation on stuck nuts/bolts, that's a shock load and it worked out ok................most of the time.
 

m8magicandmystery

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Shock loading is why your snowmobile fails and your ratchet doesn't.

yes...to a certain degree that is a legitimate reason...but still not enough imo..

vehicles with 300 or morehp shock load the splines pretty heavy on the relativley small diameter axle with two surfaces
that have way more friction when loading and axle failures are virtually non existent
 
Last edited:
N
Nov 26, 2007
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Chinook Pass, Wa
I wouldn't say the axle breaks are rare, my jeep with 35" tires aired down, and I only have a v-8 with 165 hp will snap an axle without too much trouble. It's because of the mass of the tire spinning vs. the mass of the axle. A lot of mechanical advantage to the tire, same as a track. Shock load is a major factor on sleds blowing stuff up. Think about the sheer amount of force from the track spinning at a high rate of speed then coming down on the snow transmitting a large amount of load back through the system to the little gears and chain. It's a velocity/mass issue.
 
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