I'll throw some pics up here too. Cat 24H grader leftside axle shaft. Broke 3" axle shaft. Had to strip left side tires, chaincase, final drive to extract the broken stub that fractured and expanded to a 3 1/4" shaft that would nor come through the 3" splines LOL.







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BIG carnage !!

 

what caused a shaft that large to fail???

must have taken some massive torque

 

Looks like the heat treating is to blame and it may have broke twice.

 

Na, I think it more along the lines of rEtaRd operators in the mine break stuff exponentially faster than in the real world.


But really its a scenario of diff locked, body articulated, in a high load high traction area. The 24' blade grabs a whole lotta earth and fast if you're not paying attention.


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Last winter i seen a suncor operator snap the boom clear off a 850 hoe about a foot above the lift cylinders. They were in -45 and pounding the bucket on tarsand frost lumps...

 

What pitch is that chain?

I know what it takes to break triple row 120

 

i also seen someone do a oil change on a 40 Ton Volvo wiggle wagon and forget to but oil in... seen a buddy roll a fuel & lube truck last year too, just to name a few haha

 

That chain in the 24 grader chaincase is 240XXL.

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What looks like two distinct breaks is actually only one that occurred slowly at first then went out with a boom. The smooth bit should show lines that look a bit like waves striking a beach. It broke a little bit at a time. The rough part that does not occur on the same plane was fractured all at one time and was probably the first indication something was wrong. Common for u-joints when rock crawling. It will break half way through the week under normal driving, but it was hurt Saturday on the rocks. Yes, I would look at a slightly different heat treat process. The case hardening is fine, but it seems too hard if the entire shell exploded like that.

 

I heard that a couple times from a couple guys. The 2 part break. Well maybe maybe not. I personally don't care. They're Caterpillar machines with Caterpillar parts and Mine company money. So as long as stuff breaks, I will still have a job.


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I agree, but you know we just gotta try and figure it out.

 

Lol.

You know with a close visual. It's not looking like a 2 stage break. There's the spiral fracture, and the hardcasing fracture. They both happened during the single catastrophic event, I'm pretty confident of that. The spiral fracture looks like an ice cream cone on the one shaft. There no fretting of surfaces rubbing together. I have seen lots of conventional axle shafts twist off in that ice cream cone fashion as well.





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