The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline 54 Chevy pickup spindle king pin problems

I started going through the steering and brakes on my newest project, 54 chevy 3100. I realized I needed new spindles because of a groove cut in the bottom of the axles. I found the only two spindles I could from a junk yard with good axles. For some reason car spindles are common but nobody I could find makes truck spindles so I was stuck with old used spindles. I was going to put the spindles back on last night and I noticed one spindle has lots of slop in the bushing holes. The other spindle seems to be ok. Has anyone ever dealt with this issue? I think it would be fine if I could find an oversized bushing. I have seen oversized kingpin kits but the kingpins fit good and snug in my axle so I dont think that would fix my issue. Anyone ever had this issue? Whats the fix for it? Is there anywhere that makes new pickup spindles? Another issue I see with these spindles is they are a little dinged up where the cap presses into them. I am not positive what holds the cap in but I am not sure its going to stay with the amount of dings in and around the cap groove.

Thanks

The spindles and parts are not too hard to find. Might take a little work and patience.
Start at.........eBay for one spot and a large swap meet or the parts wanted or for sale on this forum and many others.

Street rods conversions are literally throwing complete axles in the trash.

Most of the over size kits use larger outer diameter bushing and the same size pins. There are severl variations of these kits.

Jonald,

Excellent description and observations. This is a common problem. Someone posted (a while ago) a part number for a king pin set with over-sized outer-diameter bushings. As you note: these would need to have the spindle/knuckle's bushing hole/seats/socket bored/reamed out to fit the outer diameter of the bushings.

Regarding used spindles/knuckles: most used ones that I have seen/bought are "wallowed out" and not useable. Be careful buying a spindle/knuckle without first testing the snugness of the floating bushing.

showkey,

"Most of the over size kits use larger outer diameter bushing and the same size pins."

What is a brand and part number for one of those kits? This information would be quite helpful to many people. I have only seen over-size kits with over-size (.010" & .020") king-pin diameter (to fit in a reamed-to-match hole in the axle).

When I went thru this my local machine shops all told me they did not have reamers long enough to do both ends of the spindle and doing one end at a time wouldn't guarantee alignment. You may have local resources that can do that. I sent my spindles to Sid's Axles, http://www.droppedaxles.com/ and he fitted them properly with oversized bushings. I was quite pleased with the results.

You may find some useful information in the following tutorial I did about a year ago
Click HERE for thread

Grigg

Really nice job Grigg. I would have tried this had I known but did mine some time ago. The stock replacement bushings fell thru the spindles. Not sure how much clearance this indicated but probably less than the .020 you indicated the filler would handle.

I have rehabbed several spindles by using a long mandrel on a Sunnen hone to straighten up the bores in alignment and fit oversize bushings. Even if it's necessary to machine new bushings, it's not an impossible job for any machinist worthy of the name. Stand by with the defibrillator for your checkbook if you have to do that, though!

There's also a simple, easily-made addition to an adjustable hand reamer that will assure alignment of the two holes of a spindle. Once again, a real machinist would have no problem whatsoever fabricating one.
Jerry

You are likely correct..........I reviewed what we have done in the past. We used new stock pins from the kits and home made over size bushings.

Thanks for all the good replys. It give me a lot of options and things to think about. I thought about making the oversized bushings myself but was unsure because of the internal grease spiral my purchased bushings have. There is no way I can cut that but the more I think about it the more I think its not necessary.

I think I can get the bushing issue solved but theres still the issue of the end caps. What exactly holds them in? My best guess is you put them in domed side out, tap them flat with a hammer and they will expand in the groove and seal and stay. If that is how they work I really dont like it. If the cap falls off and the bushings get loose whats to stop the bottom bushing from falling out? If the bushing is worn-in in the bore and with the weight of the vehicle against the pin I think it is very unlikely to fall out, but possible.

For the most part I like these old trucks but at times I hate them. Every Issue I have would be solved if someone made new spindles. I am tempted to draw up blueprints to these spindles and see if a shop could make them as a machined steel block instead of a casting. Could make improvements to them like replaceable press in bushings and bolt on pin caps. Think would there be much demand for original truck spindles? I know most guys change out axles. Is that because there are no parts for the originals, or because they like the look and lowering affects of the new axle?

Thanks again

If you ever do find usable spindles, do yourself a favor and Loctite the outside of the bushing, being careful not to let the Loctite to go everywhere. Use the kingpin as an alignment tool until the Loctite sets up.
Doing this will preserve your spindles forever.
It may however cause more wear to occur on the inside of the bushing where it rides on the kingpin, since the bushing will no longer turn inside the spindle bore. Keeping up with the 1,000 mile interval of greasing the spindles should give you a very long kingpin bushing lifetime.
Carl

The grease helix in a home-brewed bushing can be cut freehand with a ball-end carbide burr in a die grinder or even a Dremel tool. It doesn't have to be perfect unless you're as anal as some of the guys on the forum who would have a coronary if something hand-fitted without a GM part number was ever found on their trucks.

Edit: There are several complete sets of adjustable reamers on Ebay right now, with extended shanks and centering cones- - - -exactly what's needed to line-ream the spindle bores for oversized bushings. Some of them are CHEAP! Search for "expandable reamer". There are several pages to check out, and I just counted at least 5 sets with extended shanks.
Jerry

Do you have any part numbers or sources for the oversized bushings, or complete kits? I looked at several kits, most wont give OD dimensions of the bushings but all that do say they are 1.053" which is not oversized and about .010 too small.

Thanks

Just curious what did you use to make bushings? I was hoping I could find a stock bushing to fit my kingpin with the grease helix and a larger OD and just shave to size. No luck yet.

Went through a similar situation on my 49 3100 last summer. The spindles were worn and the new stock sized bushings were too loose. The axle was fine.
Not having the tools or means to DIY, I found a local machine shop that reamed out the spindles true then custom made the oversize bushings to fit a std sized new kingpin. Wasn't cheap, around $125 per side, but they fit and work great.

Good luck
Dave

Before getting real excited about making and paying for custom bushings first read about using a loctite product to fix the bushings in place and to take up some slop in worn spindles.
Again, here is a thread about how to do that.
CLICK here

Grigg

With the help of everyone here I came up with a fix to my problem and wanted to share it. One of my spindles was fine and will work with a standard kingpin kit. My other spindle was .010 oversized in the in the bushing holes. The holes were round, not egged out one bit so I am fairly sure it was reamed out at some point before I bought it from the junk yard. But anyway after hours of research I was looking at Sids Axles website based off a suggestion here and found a part number for a Moog kingpin kit that had standard sized kingpins and .015 oversized bushings. Almost exactly what I needed. I searched the part number on Amazon and had the parts in 2 days. After measuring them they were right at .005 too big for me and unfortunately I do not have access to a lathe at the moment. But I do have sand paper, a drill, a bolt bin, and a disk sander. So I got 2 washers that were close to the ID size of the bushing and the tightest fitting bolt. I let the washers spin on the bolt and ground down the outside of them on the disk sander until they were a good fit inside of the bushing. Then stacked two more big washers on the outer edges of my bolt. The big washers clamped the bushing tight and the ground washers held it concentric. I then got a socket that fit the bolt and put in my drill so I could spin the whole setup but it could move and find its center Axis. I then held the bushing tight with sand paper and spun it with the drill. After about 10 seconds I took off about .0047 which it right where I wanted to be. So I ended up with about a .0003 press fit but I also red thread locked the bushing in place. This should keep the bushing locked to the spindle and prevent any more wear to the spindle which is how it should have been engineered in the first place in my opinion. The oversized bushings worked out perfect and already had the grease hole and helix. Even with a lathe I don't think I could have gotten a better fit over my drill method. So if anyone ever runs into this issue this was a cheap and easy and quick fix. Moog 8451B is the part number for the kingpin kit with oversized bushings and Moog 8294B is the standard kingpin set. Thanks again for the suggestions and help.

Last Line of my previous post

Wow that is really an impressive accomplishment. I wish I were that talented. Thanks for sharing.