What is a floater axle?

In a full floating rear end, the axle only does one job: transmit torque from the diff to the wheel. It doesn’t carry the weight of the car, it doesn’t handle cornering or braking loads, and it doesn’t locate the wheel. All of that is done by the hub, bearings and housing. The axle just drives. That’s what “floating” means. The axle floats inside the housing, splined at both ends, with no structural load on it other than twist.

This is a fundamentally different setup to a flanged axle where the axle shaft carries vehicle weight, braking force and cornering load as well as torque. In a flanged setup, if the axle breaks, you lose the wheel. In a floater, the wheel stays on the car because it’s retained by the hub and bearings, not the axle.

What is the difference between floater and flanged axles?

A flanged axle is one piece with a flange on the outer end that the wheel bolts directly to. It sits in a bearing at the housing end and carries everything: torque, weight, cornering and braking loads. Most factory rear ends use this arrangement. It works fine in standard applications, but it’s asking one component to do a lot of jobs.

A floater axle is a splined shaft with no flange. It connects the diff to the drive plate on the hub and only transmits torque. The weight of the car and all the other loads go through the hub and bearings onto the housing. It’s a simpler shaft doing a simpler job, which means it can be made stronger for the one thing it needs to do.

The biggest advantage is safety. If a flanged axle breaks, you lose the wheel. If a floater axle breaks, the wheel stays on the car because it’s retained by the hub and bearings, not the axle. As a general guide, once you’re running 10″ or wider wheels on a street car, getting quicker than about 7.50 seconds in the quarter, or pushing past 1,000hp, a floater setup starts making a lot more sense than a flanged one. Beyond the safety factor, floaters also reduce brake pad knockoff under hard cornering because the hub and bearings are doing the locating work, not the axle.

All Race Products axles are floater axles. We don’t manufacture flanged axles, and our floater kits and camber kits are not compatible with flanged axle setups. If you’re running a flanged rear end and want to move to a floater setup, have a look at our floater kits.

How we approach it

Every axle we make is machined in-house from billet material, heat treated in Australia, and straightened to a runout tolerance tighter than the big name brands. Every axle has true involute hobbed splines for uniform load distribution and proper mating with spools, LSDs and OEM components. Axles are necked down from the spline so wind-up is distributed over a longer area rather than concentrated at one point. Every axle is batch marked so we can trace it back to the mill that produced the raw material.

That process shows up in the results. Our V8 Supercar axles maintained a zero failure rate. The same axles power some of the fastest drag cars in Australia and New Zealand.

We hold a large range of straight floater axles ex-stock in 4340 chromoly and 300M for quick turnaround, and manufacture cambered CV ball drive axles in EN26 and 300M. Custom lengths, spline counts and materials are available for any application, including options like gun drilling for weight reduction.

Choose from:

• Floater axles
• Cambered axles
• Custom axles

For more information or to discuss your build, contact us.