Re: Keyframing rotation of object axis

What you've got there is a rotation order problem, which is a bit hard to to explain (check the help docs). You can fix it by deleting your rotation track, going to the object's coords tab, and freezing the rotation transformation. That will set the local coordinates to zero and you can now keyframe the heading rotation without any issues.

Another way around it is to use a primitive with Z orientation instead of Y orientation. You can always keframe Z rotation because it's first in the default rotation order. That's why bones and joints always have the Z axis running along their length.