Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

The donor axle I am rebuilding has the nice blue locking knobs. Sadly, there were some issues with the hubs and the PO apparantly used pliers to lock and unlock the hubs, until they cracked inside where the pin goes through.

This seems to be a common issue, after searching around, I found a post on another forum that led me to doing this repair. I have a wood lathe, but you could probably use a disc or belt sander, or even some files and a hack saw to do this.

I took one of the knobs to the hardware store and searched through all the plumbing fittings until I found a piece that I could 'turn' on my wood lathe down the right ID size and that was thick enough to have plenty of sidewall to not break in the same spot as the knob.

I took a picture of the part number, but many parts will probably work.

At home I took some measurements, then turned down the piece until it fit snugly inside the knob. Then it parted it off, or cut it to length. Note that in the pictures the piece is a little too long - it ended up hitting the stub axle and I had to grind it down later. This part does not have to be extremely precise, it just needs to give you 2 new anchor points for the pin that are in the same place as the original, and stay put.

Next i took my dremel and cut random crosshatch grooves in both parts, so that he epoxy will have lots of space to lock onto so that the new plastic piece cannot move.

I used some standard 2 part epoxy and let it dry 24 hours. After dry, just drill new holes through, reassemble and there you have it.

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

More photos:

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

clever, thank you for posting :metal:

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

Yes, very clever. All I ever did was re-drill new holes where there was meat and stick a drill bit through :lol:. Didn't line up with "free" and "lock" but did the trick. This was not a restoration procedure. It was a keep it going on many years ago. I learned how to maintain hubs so this problem would never occur again

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

Very clever, thanks for sharing it

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

Great tip! My K2500 has oem blue dials with perfect faces, and broken pins.

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

Someone should machine steel inserts to eliminate this problem from ever occurring... for those who don't maintain or lube hubs properly :cool: (which is usually the previous owner/s)

Re: Big hub Dana 44 blue locking knob repair
 

Someone is making reproductions now.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CHEVY-GMC-4...oAAOSwlJlaoBFW