The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline King Pin bushing loose

I’m replacing my king pins on my 1950 1/2 ton. I took them apart and found the top bushing on the drivers side froze to the pin and was spinning in the spindle. Now the new bushing slips into the spindle loosely. A new spindle will fix it if I can put my hands on one. I just took it apart tonight and haven’t had a chance to take it to a machine shop yet to see if they have some options. Any ideas? Thanks Don

If the hole is not to terribly worn, some sleeve lock from Loctite might work. https://www.amazon.com/Loctite-37424-Strength-Retainer-6-milliliter/dp/B0002KKTIG

The 1/2 tons were not originally designed to be a press fit (like their big brothers, 3/4 and up) but more like a hand press fit. I recently did my ‘52, and the slop measured from .002 to .006 thousands and I used locktite 660 to secure the bushings. I haven’t put allot of miles on her but so far so good.

Finding steering knuckles in good shape is getting real hard and costly. If you can repair your’s, it would be real beneficial.

If you go that route, after inserting the bushings into the steering knuckle, insert the king pin to align the bushings, then let is set until dry before you assemble.

As you wrote -- you can have new bushings made to fit by a local shop or by a retired hobbyist/ machinist. Ream or bore the spindle bore for over size bushings, fabricate new bushings, and hone to fit the new pins. Certainly not out of the realm of possibilities. Someone here on this site recently posted this - made their own - and honed to fit. May be more than what you intended to spend, but should last for years and years.

I am now curious to know what the outside dimension is for a 3/4 ton kingpin bushing. These bushings are designed for a press fit in the 3/4 ton spindles. If this dimension is larger than the hole in a 1/2 ton spindle, it seems like the 1/2 ton spindle could be bored to fit the 3/4 ton bushing.
Then you would need to know what the inside diameter of the 3/4 ton bushing is to see if a 1/2 ton kingpin will fit inside of it.
The 3/4 ton bushings need to be reamed to fit the 3/4 ton kingpins, so maybe they can be reamed to fit the 1/2 ton kingpin.
So here is what we need to know to see if we can use 3/4 ton bushings to repair otherwise shot 1/2 ton spindles without the high expense of a machine shop to make new oversized bushings.
-Outside diameter of a 3/4 ton bushing.
-Inside diameter of a 3/4 ton bushing.
-outside diameter of a 1/2 ton kingpin.
Anybody have new ones laying around to measure?

On the bushings, the parts manual says 1-1/4 x 1 ID for the 3/4 ton, and for the 1/2 ton 1-5/16 x 1-5/64 (kind of hard to read on the 1/2 ton - may have been 1-3/16.)
No sizes though on the king pins.

Oreilly’s Auto Parts lists the OD of the king pins as .866” for the 1/2 ton and .921” for the 3/4 ton. I know the listing for the 1/2 ton is correct as I just replaced mine. Can’t verify the 3/4 though. [LINK]

Hmmm! That sure doesn’t match up with the bushing dimension I found. Way too much clearance.

Moog makes a .010 over kit. I’m not sure how worn the hole is. I also found some kits with the stock pin size with a .015 over or on the bushing. The kit was over $200 I dropped it at the machine shop today. They haven’t gotten back to me with a plan. He did mention some kind of spray welding may work but I was just talking to the counter man not the machinist. He did say he gets $100 to install the bushings and team and hone. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks

"I also found some kits with the stock pin size with a .015 over or on the bushing."

Moog?
What is the part number?

When I faced the same dilemma this past summer, I did some extensive searching on the web and the only oversize kits I found were for the king pin. I found both .010” and .015” kits. So if you straight axle was worn you can ream the axle out to the size of the oversized king pin.

I did not find any kits that contained oversized bushing that were meant to fix worn steering knuckles. I know from fellow Stovebolt’s that the kits were offered years ago but they seem to have vanished off of the market.

If you found one of these bushing kits, please let me and our fellow bolters know where and the part numbers and we would be very appreciative.

https://hagensautoparts.com/chevrolet/51-chassis/25432
http://fcrcmachine.com/rare-parts-k...let-gmc-trucks-chevy-015-oversize-30348/
I can’t find the moon part# right now. I found 2 places that list over size bushing kits. One was Hagens auto parts and the other was FCRCmachine.

Thanks for the link to FCRC Machine. Your first link for Hagen’s Auto Parts appears to be for cars. I’m going to save that link (FCRC) in case my Loctite fix doesn’t hold up. Let us know how you made out with the machine shop repair and please do post the Moog part # if you can. That would be great!

The machinist was able to weld up the one bushing and machine it to the correct size. The over size kit from Rare Parts #30348 used a stock diameter pin but the bushings came .015 over on the outside diameter. This would have worked but that kit was $230 on eBay and I still would have needed to bore all the spindle holes over size. The machine shop was able to weld up the one hole and bore it to spec. They pushed in all 4 bushings. The whole thing was $175. I was real happy the way it all worked out. It’s nice to have a good machine shop handy. If anybody wants the machine shop # drop me a line. Don