Dogbones

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Dogbones is a colloquialism for a type of drive axle that allows fully independent suspension on offroad R/C cars and trucks.

The name derives from the pinned ball joint at either end of the shaft, causing the axle to resemble the type of soup bone one normally associates as being used as a dog's chew toy.

While dogbone axles are standard on many R/C vehicles because of their simplicity, the sockets in which they ride tend to wear quickly once the surface hardening wears away. They do, however, provide constant velocity output at any angle angle but have sliding parts that will increased wear compared to the constant velocity joints found on full-sized automobiles which use ball bearings and are constructed completely differently. A common, but more expensive upgrade is that of universal joints. These are often falsely marketed as constant velocity joints which are found in only found full-sized automobiles and as of yet, never RC vehicles.

THe durability between U-joints and dogbones is debatable, but the universal joint tends to have less friction and wear (due to lack of sliding surfaces) at the cost of sinusoidal ripple in the speed output if the input and output shafts are not parallel.