The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Kingpin Dust Cap Theory

As I now understand, after installing new king pins, you are supposed to seat a new dust cap and then "stake" it by using an 1/8" or so punch in 4 places around the perimeter.

When greasing, does the grease come out in the places where the dust cap has not been staked?

I think I botched my new dust caps by pounding them flat. Does anyone know where these can be obtained? Jim Carter and my NAPA don't have them.

Thanks!

funny i just did my king pins on my truck yesterday, what i did was use the old king pin and hit the plug so it wedges in the spindle hole holding it tight,there are not to be flat but just enough to tighten then in the spindle,be sure to ware eye protection when doing this too.its the same thing you would do on a freeze plug on the side of a block as long as its a flat type of freeze plug, hammering them flat is how you can take them out, i think they should be 11/16 flat plugs if you have a .922 pin. i would think some parts house should have them or at least they could order them for you.

I treat them as a freeze plug, no staking. Even take the time and effort to repair previous staking attempts.
What does the shop manual say? I could be wrong but I'd be surprised if they're supposed to be staked.

Grigg

I got my axel back from the shop with the caps staked and they are cupped not flat and only a little grease is visible where not staked. Hope this helps Griggs

The shop manual says to seat the caps and then stake them at 4 points.

The grease zerks and dust caps are at different ends of the bushing so it seems that some grease must come out around the cap for it to flow fully through the channels of the bushing.

They are both convex and can be flattened a little to make them fit tighter. I also stake mine in four places as per the manual. Your only doing the job once right? No sense in being lazy about it and if you check the grease on a reasonable basis, you shouldn't have many issues and need to swap kingpins again in your lifetime.

I doubt you'll see anything more than a tiny bit of grease if any, come out of the top. Most of it will ease out between the thrust bearings between spindle and axle if I remember correctly.

Jeff

I just took my front axle apart the other night, mine didnt have any dust caps, but it all came apart fairly easily.
It looks like the last person who did the King pins didn't put the caps back on. But they did take the time to grease everything.
Everything that was greasable on that truck was well greased.

I made a cutter out of an old king pin to clean up the old staked area.
If the old staking is not cleaned up it is hard to get the new end caps to seal.
King Pin Cap Cutter

Just don't pump to much grease in the zurks, if you do you can push out the plugs that are the dust covers. most likely thats what happened to Jeffl.

Nice cutter Dave.

Thanks Benny. I like the two 1936 Coupe Pickups in your photo bucket. I have two customers with 1936 coupe pickups. I use to think they were rare but now I am starting to wonder.

lol, They are rare,being'36 and they are still around after WW2 and not scraped out, the numbers i got was like 5800 of them made. I wonder too, I got both of them from one guy and he kept one for himself. How many are left? Who knows. Thanks Brad

That's a great idea.

When I clean them up I use a punch with a suitably rounded end to work the metal back into place, then you don't loose any material and it's about as good as new. Still if any final cleanup is necessary your cutter would do the trick.

Grigg