Originally Posted by
Sashko
EDIT: Come to think of it, I bet you the Braille dots are for a blind passenger, as you can either go back-wards into the drive-through ATMs, or have a blind person sitting in the back seat.
Perhaps the real reason is that at the factory that makes ATM keys, it's simpler to make all keys with Braille on them than it is to make a special run of Braille-less keys that can be used only for drive-through machines. But the "blind-passenger" hypothesis is perfectly sensible and attractive. Just as there's a good reason to have a disabled permit that's not immediately obvious,
Back on topic,...
1) I believe axles don't typically "bend" in the sense that a paper clip does. My understanding is that bending stress causes a tiny crack to appear on the side that is in compression and the axle deviates at the buckle. The axle is, in that sense, already broken. An axle that looks bent should be replaced immediately because when the crack propagates all the way around, it will break in two. So says Jobst Brandt, anyway.
2) Bet your cones are OK. An axle that has "bent" breaks such a short time later that the cones won't have time to "notice" that it was bent. Besides, the beauty of the cup and cone design is that the bearing can tolerate a fair bit of misalignment (from a "bent" axle, say) without binding. You might see that the burnished surface of the cone where the balls were running is not perfectly round but it won't get pitted and "shot" from that degree of misalignment alone. The cone will probably still run smoothly with the new straight axle installed, too.
3) And yes, you want to be sure your dropouts are aligned in all dimensions. Not only will wonky dropouts put bending stress on your new axle and eventually break it; the old bent axle may have itself succeeded in bending the dropouts. Since the locknuts are clamped to the dropouts, the dropouts will tend over time to bend to match the deviation of the axle.