4 x 4 clip broke again

just replaced shaft, couplers (front and rear), clips/star washers, dust covers, all ball bearings and weldment (shaft cover).  a real pain in the you know what.  all because I ran up on a rock this summer mowing.  gotta be a better way to do this.  other than hey dummy don't run up on rocks anyone got an upgrade?

Maybe a skid plate like on a 4×4 utility?

gonna try to make some 8 mm rod pieces to replace ball bearings in 4 wheel drive connectors.  any suggestions on what metal type to use.  I do have a small forge that I use to harden knife blades ground from 440 stainless or o1 tool steel.  Mcmaster Carr has M2 steel which has the same hardness as the 8 mm ball bearings they sell  around Rockwell 62

thanks

You don't need a real hard steel for the rods, as the contact area is orders of magnitude greater than with the balls.  I'd just get some 8mm grade 8.8 or grade 10.9 metric bolts with adequate smooth shaft to cut the slugs from and you'll be good to go.

thanks rich, got the 8mm bolts at home depot today grade 8.8 and started making the slugs.  initially made cylinder shaped pieces but when tried them in the parts I took off my tractor they do not sit deep enough in the connector.  so made them to look something like a pistol bullet with a blunt taper on one end and flat surface on the other.  tapered end fitting inside the connector.  10 mm long  brings the flat surface to the face of the connector.  I am not sure about this length yet as I do not have any extra star washers and c clips to test fit everything.  it is a work in progress

There's no need to try to extract every last millimeter of length out of those pieces, Doc.  As I noted earlier, the difference in contact area between a ball, which contacts only at a microscopically small tangent point, and a cylinder even two millimeters long is truly huge – like a hundred times the area of contact.  Make it easy on yourself.  (grin)

made the slugs today and installed. 8mm diam, 10mm long, tapered at one end.   much more difficult to put together than with the ball bearings.  the flat surface of the slug at the edge of the connector catches when mating the connector and shaft.  if I were to do it again I would taper both ends of the slug to help avoid that problem.  unfortunately wont know until april if the whole thing works!