A602 hub woes

[LoTec]

I tried to post this a few minutes ago. I hit “submit” and the post seems to have disappeared. !@#$!!

I'll try again.

I took 2 A603 hubs for A602 Aermotor to my machinist. On one hub he drilled/pressed out the broken shaft and made me a new shaft and pressed it in. It's nice and tight and should work fine.

The other hub already had the shaft removed. He made a new shaft. The problem is, I can just slide the new shaft into the hub hole without having to press it in.

My machinist made a tapered key, and said that should secure the shaft when I drive it in. I'm not confident in that. I don't want to put up a windmill 100 miles from home and have the hub come loose.

Solutions I am contemplating:

1. Drill and tap hub in a couple of places to add two set screws to secure shaft, in conjunction with tapered key. I usually weld a big washer on the end of the shaft rather than heat and peen the end, but maybe peening would also help. I'm also tempted to slather the shaft with epoxy when inserting, but this would probably get fried with either heating the shaft or welding it.

2. Once I bought a rebuilt A702 from Dakota Windmill and it came with a weird hub whose shaft and the end of the hub stuck out a couple inches farther than usual. I suspected they made an extra long shaft and welded a chunk of steel on the end of the hub because of a loose shaft hole or a cracked hub. Of course, they are pretty good at making their weld repairs invisible. What they did seemed to work well, so maybe I should go back and ask my machinist to make a long shaft and a press on disc I can nickle weld to the hub.

Any thoughts?

[windybob]

Maybe take it back and have him knurl it. No epoxy. Or have a new shaft made. I would not leave any doubt, there are enough issues with even good fitting hubs. Oh and I weld them all to the shaft also.

[windybob]

And I also hate it when a post dissolves into cyberspace.