I have been contemplating upgrading to a more current set of wheels and brakes, but do not want it to be a major project. So, I asked Matco, and Tracy Obrian what could be done with their products, given my 5/8" axles and Diehl gear. Matco has yet to reply, but here is the reply from Tracy Obrian, in case anyone is in the same boat.
There are several approaches to swapping out your wheels and brakes: The first is to modify your existing Matco style axles to allow a set of our C-90 hydraulic disc brakes to be mounted and then fit the axles with a set of 5" Azusa TriStar wheels, which interface directly with our C-90's. The second approach is to unbolt your axles from the Dan Diehl weldments and bolt on a set of our Cessna style heat treated chromoly axles, along with our C-90's and 5" TriStars. This would allow you to upgrade to 3/4" axles, which are 40% stronger than 5/8" axles. The downside to this approach is that you would have to drill a new bolt pattern in your DD weldments, as your Matco axles probably have their standard bolt pattern, which is larger than ours. If you wanted to go this direction, you could ship me your DD weldments and I could redue them for you. The Third option is a set of our 3/4" "Pulsar" style chromoly axles, which have Matco pattern baseplates and use a special configuration of our C-90's. I'm currently out of the Pulsar axle weldments, but I could include a set in our next heat treat cycle, which will be in just a few weeks. Let me know what you think. Tracy PS: If you know any KR builders that are going to use DD style gear legs, our KR style axles will bolt directly to their gear legs and are designed to accept our Cessna style C-90's and either the 5" TriStars or our 5" Premium wheels. Daniel R. Heath da...@windstream.net See N64KR at <http://krbuilder.org/> http://KRBuilder.org - Then click on the pics See you at the 2010 - KR Gathering in Richmond, Ky - I39
