Rear Axle Assembly and Axle Shafts

We could call this article “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About the Rear Axle Assembly and Axel Shaft” but that’s a tongue-twister if there ever was one, so let’s just shorten it to “Axles” and leave it at that.

An axle, of course, is a shaft for a rotating wheel on your vehicle. Some axles are fixed to the wheels, some rotate with the wheels and some are separate and are fixed to the surrounding parts and the wheels rotate around the axle. No matter, without the axle you would be going nowhere very fast.

The words axle and axle shaft are pretty much the same and they are part of the suspension system of your car or truck. There are three basic types of axles:

• Straight axle….a single rigid shaft connecting the left wheel to the right wheel, commonly used on trains, commercial trucks and off-road vehicles.
• Split-axles….most commonly used in passenger cars where each wheel is attached to a separate axle shaft.
• Tandem axles….seen on semi-trailers where two or more axles are close together providing more support for heavier weights.

The other term you will see used when discussing axels is “drive axle.” This refers to an axle that is driven by the engine. For front wheel drive cars the drive axle is the front axle; this is a combination of the transmission and front axle that makes a transaxle. In rear-wheel drive cars the transmission and rear axle are combined. In these cases the axle that is not driven by the transmission is called the “dead axle.”

All of this adds up to become the front axle assembly or the rear axle assembly, and they are reasonably difficult to replace in case you were wondering. If you have a hoist and the proper tools the job of replacing one is time consuming but relatively easy; if you don’t have a hoist then don’t bother trying. You might as well try to replace a transmission using a hammer.

Listen, we won’t lie to you; replacing car parts with our salvage yard used parts is touch and go depending on your knowledge of car repair. Some repairs, like headlamps and bumpers and batteries, we say “go for it” no matter what level of home-mechanic you are; other repairs like the transmission or fuel pump we say hold on; if you don’t know what you are doing then you shouldn’t even attempt it.

If you should decide to do these repairs then we will welcome you with open arms at our Savannah You Pull It salvage yard.