Roadside scrap: What is it?

[strantor]

There was a truck broken down on the side of the road (half way between the road and a parallel railroad track) for about a week near my house. One day it was gone, and in its place was a broken axle shaft. I stopped and grabbed the shaft and saw this thing near it:



It seems to be forged steel. It was found close enough to the axle shaft to be "probably" part of the truck, but far enough away that it could have fallen off a train. Anyone recognize it? I'm thinking maybe it's a spacer that goes between leaf springs and axle tube, but I've never seen one that looks like this and I can't visualize how it would work in that capacity.

 

[rabler]

That looks like a vice jaw in the foreground, but otherwise it is hard to guess scale. Unless it was a pretty large truck, that is good chunk of metal, and I'd lean toward it being something off a train car.

 

[strantor]

That looks like a vice jaw in the foreground, but otherwise it is hard to guess scale. Unless it was a pretty large truck, that is good chunk of metal, and I'd lean toward it being something off a train car.

Yes it's a 4" vise jaw, so the thing is probably ~5-6" long, 4" wide, and 2" tall.

 

[Manual Mac]

Does the other side have any locating holes in it?

 

[mattthemuppet2]

those truck axle shafts are a good source of hardenable high carbon steel. I found an interaxle on my bike ride home once and used part of it to make a knife for my dad's 70th birthday. Not trivial to cut through though.

 

[brasssmanget]

coil spring spacer/booster?

 

[Janderso]

coil spring spacer/booster?

Good guess. Remember the twist in spacers? = junk. You could kill somebody with those things.

 

[rabler]

Yes it's a 4" vise jaw, so the thing is probably ~5-6" long, 4" wide, and 2" tall.

I was guessing a 6” jaw …

 

[Bi11Hudson]

Just looking at it, forged but not painted, I would guess at part of a railroad coupler box. The problem there is that when it fell off the train, it would have fallen between the rails. So my next guess would be where the axel was swapped, it is part of a fixture used in swapping the bad axel. I had overloads on a heavy pickup, that I had single wheels had to do with a curiosity in a state law. The truck could have been a dually by simply changing the axel. (heavy frame) The overloads for a small truck wouldn't be near that heavy. In my younger years, (1967) I worked in small tandems. The suspension was no where near that heavy.

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[jwmay]

I don't think I'm right, but it looks like a swedge/swage block to me. That's what I'd use it for.