No Offence takin' mate, gotta keep you guys from down under on our side ya know! I've worked in and out of machine shops a good portion of my 65 years also Ken, my brother and I were partners in a shop at one time and I did much of the machine work in our fabrication shop, at the accelerator that I just retired from. It's only common sense that if you run a straight blade into a straight crevasse that its going to hang up. These are different than the solid bushings that are in the ½ ton spindles. We had to take out about .013 mils and the Sunnen hone did the job perfect in about 10min., and for all of twenty bucks, only problem is it took three weeks to find this guy. There would be no problem hand reaming the axle boss or a solid bushing.
I might add as a side note, to anyone buying an adjustable reamer, spend the little bit extra and buy a good one, stay away from the imports. The reamer and pilot I bought from McMaster Carr is from Chadwick & Trefethen Inc., an American company in NH. The surfaces are all ground, deburred and polished, the nuts are machined to a tight tolerance and the adjustment has a very smooth feel to it.
The import that I got from Enco (was real cheap) is very rough to say the least. It’s blackened to cover up the heavy tooling marks, has a rough feel to it, sharp edges, i.e., not deburred and the nuts are a loose fit and hang up in the threads, it’s difficult to adjust accurately. When you mic across the blades after making an adjustment they vary by as much as .010”. also there are no pilots available for them, you will have to make your own if you need extended length and they are an odd metric thread.
Just in case there are any of the guys that are unfamiliar with the extended length reamer, I snapped a picture of the straight and angled pair that I have. The difference between the import and domestic jump right out at you on close inspection.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2185416770098611668XIvwGq Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
