Brief Description: Mounted the Brakes and Wheels on Gear Axels
I just wanted to share with you my experience with making the hole in the gear leg axel for the cotter pin that secures the axel nut. Once you have the axel nut tightened just enough to stop any wheel play and yet the wheel rolls freely, the instructions tell you to use a center punch, through a hole in the axel nut, to mark the axel for drilling the cotter pin hole. I followed the instructions but after center punching, the axel nut that was easy to put on was now very hard to turn. To make a long story short, I had to go buy a 1.5"/38mm deep socket to use with a breaker bar to remove the nut. All the while, I was thinking that the axel threads were being damaged and I was going to have to replace my gear leg. I did get the nut off and inspection of the axel threads showed that the punch deformed one adjacent thread enough to cause the problem. When I drilled the hole to size, that thread was removed but I had to lightly use a deburring bit to remove the holes jagged edges before I could get the axel nut back on the axel past the hole. Several times of exercising the nut on the threads resulted in easy turning of the axel nut. For the other axel nut,instead of using the center punch, I lightly drilled the axel with a #30 bit to mark the axel for drilling. This worked much better then using the center punch method. The axel nut did need some massaging to get free nut threading but nothing like the other axel nut.
