FN motorbikes! Love to hate em! Hate to love em!

[eclectic cowboy]

Well, we must have pretty similar weather as pistachios can be grown in both places. I researched them pretty heavy years ago and they need so many days colder than...and so many days hotter than....They don't do well in most places.

But we are usually colder than Albuquerque even though only 4300 ft above sea level. Those Canadian fronts off the great plains are a nasty surprise.

 

[DAMIEN1307]

But we are usually colder than Albuquerque even though only 4300 ft above sea level. Those Canadian fronts off the great plains are a nasty surprise.

Back where I am from in New England, we called those Canadian fronts, the "Montreal Express"...lol...lol.

"Montreal Express. It's essentially a local weatherman's slang term for when you have an "almost" back-door cold front shooting straight down; North to South. Montreal to Boston. It's not something they teach you at meteorological school, but something that all the local New England boys know. Normally the fronts come through the Canadian maritimes which is a true back-door or through the Great Lakes, called the front door. It's not often that they come straight down, and fast, thus the term Montreal Express was born."

20 below zero with a nor'easter blowin up your kilt and it's snowing sideways north to south...lol...lol.

 

[ImpulseRocket]

I'm no engineer, heck I never even played one on TV, but I have always been under the impression that woodruff keys and the like are engineered to shear before something else breaks. Your mileage may vary....

Still using a chop saw I got after a stainless steel worker threw it in the dumpster at work. Said it sounds like the motor works but the saw blade quit moving. Two bucks later I was in business.

Woodruff keys are a design for high speed applications. The shorter channel length keeps the cut edges away from shaft shoulders for better harmonics and balance and the deeper center of the cut has the key sitting in much deeper in the shaft that what is above the surface, adding stability to the key, limiting rocking/side to side movement.

A part of their design i to also act as a failsafe as you believe. A big part of that goes back to the deeper cut and the half moon shape. Since it resists rocking a lot more than a standard square key, the full force of the lateral load gets paced right at the edge the the shaft where it meets the keyway.