Been tryin' to get this posted since sun up and I keep getting
interrupted, so all what I wrote is probably out of date by
now. But, here goes anyway.
Unless I miss understood the article Grigg, the crux of it was
that the bushing should be full floating, which the owner was
completely aware of, and that was what he was upset about.
Do as you may, but I'll still stick with the factory design
whenever possible. Now if you came up with a needle bearing
replacement instead of the bushings, that's one mod that I
would agree with, because it would improve on the design
instead of detracting from it.
It's true, that today in order to keep the floating bushing
in many instances, one may have to ream/hone the steering
knuckle. Along with that necessity you would need OS bushings
which are probably not available. Meaning you would have to
have access to a machinist or have a lathe available to make
your own new OS bushings. So....yep, the easy way out would be
to glue the bushings into the wobbled out steering knuckle and
simply rotate the load on the king pin alone.
Which brings to mind a problem I had when I re-bushed the
steering knuckles on my 3600. Reaming is not the best choice
for this kind of a fit. Honing to the finish fit to the king pins would be
my preference. I do have piloting adjustable reamers that
allowed me to come close to the ideal slip fit, but the last
bit I took to my local auto machine shop and had him line-hone
them on his Summen hone. I'm looking for an alternative to the
auto shop, that is, some way of final honing two bushings
that are 6" apart at home in the shop.
There were lots of variation over the years. One that was the
subject of a discussion just a couple of weeks ago was the
thrust bearing vs the thrust washer. I'd much prefer a thrust
bearing over the washer on my truck, but perhaps the reasoning
was the physical dimensions. Where the thrust washer is
capable of supporting more weight than a thrust bearing.
Of course now that my '50 is retired and doesn't do any
hauling anymore, I could get by with a bearing now. But from
what it sounds like, the kits are not shipped with bearings
any more, just thrust washers.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
Last edited by Denny Graham; 08/24/2015 9:13 PM.
