Driveline windup damage On Ferret.

[Grego]

Here's when you know there has been some windup damage on those pins holding the planetary gears. Caught before a catastrophic  failure luckily. After removing all the parts, machining larger holes and installing larger pins it's now fixed. Pardon the bad music in the background. Another fun find was my new favorite bolt. I think they over torqued this one a bit too much. For a second I thought "wow ferrets use some sort of variable pitched bolts!".

[Grego]

Ohh and another very odd thing I discovered is that the brass plugs that fit into the wheel hubs are a very odd size. I had to re-tap mine because a previous owner misaligned the cover and tried to hammer it on. Well one of the dowels lined up and pinched the threads on the brass plug and they stripped out when I removed them.  The tap you need is a Compressed Gas Thread Tap, 0.830"-14 Thread Size. This thread size seems to be a popular size for paintball gun air tanks. Anyway I had to spend $150 for the damn thing. Yeah I probably could have bought a wheel hub cap for cheaper, but then we would never know the thread size. 

Makes me wonder why it's that size in the first place. Did Daimler have a warehouse full of these gas plugs and figured why not just use them?

 

https://www.mcmaster.com/2477A23/

[teletech]

1 hour ago, Grego said:

Ohh and another very odd thing I discovered is that the brass plugs that fit into the wheel hubs are a very odd size. I had to re-tap mine because a previous owner misaligned the cover and tried to hammer it on. Well one of the dowels lined up and pinched the threads on the brass plug and they stripped out when I removed them.  The tap you need is a Compressed Gas Thread Tap, 0.830"-14 Thread Size. This thread size seems to be a popular size for paintball gun air tanks. Anyway I had to spend $150 for the damn thing. Yeah I probably could have bought a wheel hub cap for cheaper, but then we would never know the thread size. 

Makes me wonder why it's that size in the first place. Did Daimler have a warehouse full of these gas plugs and figured why not just use them?

 

https://www.mcmaster.com/2477A23/

I don't know for sure, but I'd suspect you are actually looking at a British Standard pipe thread (BSPF) there, you'll find them in a few sizes here and there throughout the vehicle.

[Grego]

I think you may be right! The 1/2" BSPT has a nominal OD of 0.825" with a 14 pitch. That tap I used is 0.83" with a 14 pitch. Maybe the BSTP is technically a whitworth, but I'd have to look into the specifications more. 

[teletech]

8 minutes ago, Grego said:

I think you may be right! The 1/2" BSPT has a nominal OD of 0.825" with a 14 pitch. That tap I used is 0.83" with a 14 pitch. Maybe the BSTP is technically a whitworth, but I'd have to look into the specifications more. 

Good idea to have British Standard wrenches as well, as there are a few places they show up (like the fuel fittings) and without them you are left wondering why neither your inch or metric wrenches quite fit.

Whitworth is yet another thing still and less common.  I haven't found any on the Ferret, that I know of.  Using an optical comparator to see if the threads are 55 degrees or 60 degrees is the fastest way to verify suspected Whitworth threads.