Seeking advice on spindles and their wear resistance (making new spindles)

Hey there! I’m new here and I had a fabrication question. So I have a 2055 white gt and it uses bushings in the wheels. I am converting it to needle bearings (regular ball bearings won’t fit because it is a 1” spindle and the rim is 1 1/4 inside diameter) and I have about 1/32 of wear on the underside of the spindles. I don’t want to run needle bearings on the current spindles because I know that the bearings will get chewed up. So, I plan to make new spindles. Will 1018 mild cold steel round work? I plan to get a 2” cube of steel and weld the kingpin and spindle  through it, but my concern is, will heat treated mild steel take 300 lbs on 2 linear load bearing inches? I can’t find replacement spindles anywhere either. Any help from anyone is greatly appreciated and I can’t thank you enough. Thanks for reading this!

Did some googling and this is what I found...

https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/product-guide/alloy/1018

Quote :

Applications
Pins
Rods
Shafts
Spindles
Sprockets

It looks good to me.

A lot of guys use grade 8 bolts. That way you can get rid of the e clip or cotter pin setup and just run a lock nut. That would be the way I’d do it

That would work well too. How well do they weld?

I’ve never done it personally, but I would imagine they weld pretty well. Might get a couple small ones to stick together and see whatcha think

Brining the thread back. So, I was told that needle bearings can skid sometimes (only under very light loads though but still not very reassuring) and I decided to look at 4 on 4 trailer hubs. I found a kit on Amazon for the hub, bearing, studs, lugs and seals for $40 each, but there were some complaints in the review of damaged/missing/incorrect parts. What’s worse is that I googled the seller and they were a 3.0 of 5. Not good. So, I looked elsewhere, and it seems all the places that sell hubs are either insanely priced or 20-30 to ship it. But I decided to give @darkside0914 ‘s advice another go and I checked BMI karts again. I found an aluminum hub, 1” bore, 4 on 4, but it looks in the pictures like it’s only 3 inches or so in length, which seems like a pretty small space for the amount of weight that I would have on there (300 lbs per spindle, tractor and blower is about 1100 with fluids) so I’m not sure. But, they are only $30 a piece. The last and most likely option would be to go between sources and buy spindles on Amazon and hubs at tractor supply and rims at another website that is called recstuff.com. For the spindles and hubs it would be around $90. Thoughts?

Well, things just got more interesting. I went on EverBuyAYak and found a set of John Deere rims, used of course, for $70. 1” ball bearings, free shipping and they are the right size! So I think that will be what I’m going with because it should hold up just as well and cost a lot less than the hub conversion and probably less fab work.

If I were you I'd just weld on the warn down spots on your spindles and then file the weld down and make it round again. But the John Deere rims are a nice upgrade, they should have tapered bearings like a car.

My John Deere has an odd ball rim on it and all I did was take about 3 pop cans and cut them up and wrapped them up like a straw and used them as bushings..........gets you by if you need more time to think on it!

Also Surplus Center might be another good plas to look for wheels and hubs!

BlakeGroce wrote:

If I were you I'd just weld on the warn down spots on your spindles and then file the weld down and make it round again. But the John Deere rims are a nice upgrade, they should have tapered bearings like a car.

My John Deere has an odd ball rim on it and all I did was take about 3 pop cans and cut them up and wrapped them up like a straw and used them as bushings..........gets you by if you need more time to think on it!

Also Surplus Center might be another good place to look for wheels and hubs!

I thought about welding it and filing, but it's only about 1/32 of wear so I'd be filing for a long, long time The rims I found were just the standard sealed ball bearings, but the individual bearings are rated for around 1000 lbs max so not quite as good but I think it's an upgrade from what I have and for about half the price I can't complain.

I looked at surplus center and they had some for 3/4 bearings for 5 bucks a pop but I'd rather keep the 1" spindles, little more future proof. They had a really good price on hubs and spindles but the shipping ate me alive just about so maybe someday we'll pick em up when I'm not broke like a fallen vase

Good idea on the soda can shims, might try that