First of all, the drive train consists of the parts or items that make your vehicle have motion, without one of them the vehicle will not move foreward or backwards on it's own power.
It is similar to a chain reaction, without one link (all hell will break loose), now I suppose this is why when I was in The Old army, they has privates, Corporals, Sergents etc etc :roll:
Anyway we will start at the rear of the chassis, picture a vehicle without the load body or cab body, you will see only the chassis, this is the box shaped metal, which has been designed in such a way and strengthened with various cross members and "fish plates" the drive train components are installed between these two main rails.
So at the rear you will see the spring packs, these spring packs are attached with shackle hangers, pins and bushes, the reason why there are hangers is because as you load your vehicle, the spring hangers will move, thus giving you a better distribustion of the load as the spring packs lengthen or become "flat", sometimes when a vehicle is overloaded, these spring pack leaf blades can break, but if you have the type of main blade that wraps around the shackle bush, you will have enough support to carry on driving, when the centre bolt breaks, your vehicle will crab and casue excessive tyre wear if you do not fit a new bolt.
If you look carefully at this photo you will see the rear spring packs at the rear of the vehicle.
This photo below shows a new idea that we are busy with, instead of fitting the two half bushes for the shackle pins, we will be fitting these type of bushes instead, what we think they will basically do is help prevent side twist of the spring pack.
This article will be continued once I have uploaded more photo's :arrow:
. It is actually quite sad how quiet this forum has become.