Burned Metal

I am working on the wide front off a JD 4020. The wide front does not appear to be original on that tractor. Anyway, the hubs and knuckles (spindle and shaft in knee) appear to have been burned. On one the shaft in the knee is severely pitted and about 1" from the bottom there is a obvious crack in the shaft. This AR55180 Knuckle I will replace for sure. I am also trying to assess the hubs, there is metal eroded away on each side of the bolts that go through the rim where the rim touches the hub surface. I am wondering if this is from heat.
Is there anyway to assess the ability of the metal to do its job? Thanks. Paul

Sounds like the front end may have been sitting somewhere, sunk down in the dirt, with no front wheels, for a while.

Hi I worked in a wreckers for a while.
The only time we questioned parts from fire damage was if it had got so hot, aluminium parts had melted from near the other stuff we wanted, and things got so hot they may be warped.
Or it was a cab frame or roll bar, and needed to be structurally sound for safety. They automatically got bent with the big cat bucket, and went straight in the scrap pile!.
so i'm guessing if burnt it would be ok if you can't see cracks in the rest of it and there is enough left for reasonable strenght. I would hope if it burnt the bearings got replaced not just re greased as I've seen before!.

Has that tractor ever had a loader/ blade fitted, i seem to remember guys breaking front axle parts on certain 4010 and 20 series. They got fed up with this after the second time. Then came in for 5020 front axles and put them on.
The track is wider and I think they used the rims to, as I seem to remember the hubs being bigger, It looked wrong, but you would have a hard time snapping that axle off.
so I'm wondering if it got used parts from a wreckers to fix it back to original when something failed.
Could also be the parts spent a lot of time in farm yard manure to and corroded bad as another thought.
Regards Robert

Heat may have been deliberately applied, trying to get parts unfrozen....like changing the spacing on the front tires, or getting a spindle bushing out.

On metal integrity, it depends on the metal and the heating and cooling method. Since you don't know that you just have to leave it to your better judgement and mother deere's reputation for overbuilding things.

Mark