How I shortened the axle.
Take your original axle and the new axle (complete with boots) and lay them beside each other. Or get something or someone to help hold them standing up. What you want to do is compress both axles to take out the slack in the bearings and get them so they are as short as possible, just use hand pressure.
Now measure how much "longer" the new axle is compared to your old one.
Write this down, because this is the total length you want subtracted from the length, not what you cut out.
Now remove the boot clamps. You just as well cut them off, trust me you can't save them, I tried. :)
Now to remove the boots and bearings togeather I had the wife hold the axle while I took a piece of brass and a hammer and hit the bearing as close to the axle as you can get and give it a few whacks. It will slide off. It has the same retainer ring as you see on the axle that fits into your diff to hold it in. So it dont take to much beating.
Now you should be down to nothing but the axle with the splines on each end.
Now before you go sawing or parting off in the lathe you need to read this through. The drawings I have here shows you why. You want to save the splines as they are, so you want to cut somewhere in the middle. Now that you have it cut into 2 pieces you want to take one and turn down the end about 1 inch back, and bore the other one out 1 " deep. See where Im going now.
You want about a .001" to .002" press fit when you press them back togeather. Will be nice if you also make a V groove so the weld will have a better penetration.
My new axle needed to be shortened 4 1/2". The original length was 15" and the new one was 19 1/2". Yours could vary.
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