California Drive

[Trent B]

Originally Posted by EricH

A live axle has the axle rotating and used to drive the wheel. A dead axle is where any rotation of the axle is inadvertent; it's your standard chain-sprocket-wheel setup.

To elaborate.

Live axle is where the axle is suspended in bearings and the sprocket and wheel are rigidly attached to it (direct drive is also a live axle design using the gearbox shaft as an axle)

Dead axle is where the axle is any rod (in some cases just a standard bolt from a hardware store) and the wheel is on bearings with a sprocket bolted to it.

Another note, 6WD is often much better than 4WD especially in a drop center configuration because it takes an incredible amount of torque to rotate a 4WD system due to the long wheel base, whereas 6WD with a drop center configuration has an effectively shorter wheelbase.