Kingpin install

[fordman]

i have never done this. i let someone else do mine. and it was on my drum brake spindles. i don't remember anything in the kit i bought except for the pin and the bushings. so i'm not sure about this seal and bearing your talking about. i would say if there is room for the bearing to be installed then it should be put in. the seal i don't know maybe the shop was unaware of the seal and didn't make allowance for it to go up into the spindle. is the bushing fill the entire spindle area where it was inserted or can it be moved up to fit the seal in? the kit you have is suppose to fit all 73-79 f100's i looked it up.

[dotcentral]

I called my machine shop and they had never heard of having any type of seal in there. The guy said he had never heard of anything but nylon bushings and said that was what Ford put in them from the factory. I have heard other people say the same thing, maybe it depends on the factory? my 71 w/ drums had nylon (about 135K) and the 79 parts truck (80k, or maybe 180k?) both had nylon, I assumed they had been swapped out.

Anyhow, he pushed the inserts up higher in the bore. Should be enough to get the seals in and the spindles, bearings, & shims on the axles. After dinner I'll try it out. I'll take pics, but it's getting dark so not sure how well it will show up.

[dotcentral]

Well, the seals fit into the upper spindle bore or hole, with a little pushing by hand. I got one spindle on, I put a shim on the top of the axle, and on between the bearing and the axle. Don't know if that's right or not. My axles had a shim on top of the axle and somewhere below. I forget where exactly, its been awhile. Still need to torque everything. Do the grease caps have a torque value?

So, while I was thinking I'm glad all that's solved I was playing with the spindle, swinging it through its arc and decided to grab the bearing. The damn thing is loose in there. There is about a 1/32" amount of play top to bottom. Is there supposed to be any slop? Probably what the shims are for, but I heard or read somewhere no more than 2 per side.

I used 71 axles with 79 spindles. I have a set of newer axles, about 75 or so. I could not find a difference in the axle ends with a tape measure. Guess I need to find a higher precision measuring instrument. These axles are pretty rough, the kingpin bores looked bad, so between that & the apparent sameness of the axle ends I decided to try and reuse the 71 axles.

Got a couple of pics with the bushings moved to accomodate the seal. I didn't want to clean the grease off my hands to show a pic with the seal installed. I'll try to remember to do that for the other spindle.

Edited to add: I went back out and pumped the zerks fittings full of grease, that took out all of the slack. Maybe its supposed to be like this. I have a Chilton's, a Haynes, and a Ford Chassis manual. I can find no mention of top to bottom "play" of the spindle mounted on the axle.

Second question: where should the shims be placed? Do I need to take the lower shim out and place it on top of the bearing instead of under it?

[dotcentral]

Anybody in the mood to check something on your trucks to help me out?

I have to much up and down movement in my spindle on the kingpin/axle. A friend of mine found a section of the big Chiltons that lists play in this area needing to be 0.003 to 0.010 (thousands of an inch). Using my feeler gauge I am at 0.025. About 2.5 times more than recomended. This is with reusing an old shim from the drum setup, plus 2 new shims on the one side.

I am hoping a few people with a set of feeler gauges can check their trucks and tell me what they have. Just place the gauge between the axle and spindle, axle & bearing, or anywhere you can get something in between the spidle and axle (where they are held together by the kingpin) to give me a reading. And also if you can tell me how many miles you have on it since kingpins were replaced.

If alot of people have about this much clearance or more, I won't worry about it. Well, I'll worry less about it. I hope.

[NM5K]

Normally, the spindles should be fairly tight
after shimming. They should turn easy, but
not have much slop at all. I don't measure em,
just go by feel... Not sure about the two shim
rule...I don't think I had to use any more than
that. But.. If I had one that was loose, I would
use an extra shim, rather than have it loose.
I don't see what it would hurt using an extra
shim, except that they may compress down a
bit after some time. Yep, there should be ring
seals, and I think many of the newer trucks
used nylon, but my 68 F-250 always had the
metal bushings. Or I think anyway. I changed
them, and the old ones were probably original,
and they were metal.
Now my 74 F-100 does have nylon, and I think
it did from the factory. They have already been
changed once, and they are now shot again.
Need to do that truck now. Will I be using the
nylon bushings? I really doubt it... I don't think
they last near as long as the bronze. I think
I'm gonna slap bronze in it , like I did the 68..
Anyway, I wouldn't run a kingpin that had much
slop at all. I'd add an extra shim before I did that.
To heck with the rules... Loose kingpins will really
dog the tires after a while.
MK

[dotcentral]

Did your nylon kit come with shims? I had bought 2 sets from NAPA, one nylon, the other brass because I wasn't sure which I wind up using. The Nylon kit bought does not have shims, so don't know if they were missing or didn't come with them..

[fordman]

my king pin set is older than yours. it is also for drum brakes. but mine came with bushings that had a thrust washer made on them. so no shims were needed when they were installed.

[NM5K]

Most kits should have a couple of shims
for each kingpin. I haven't bought a nylon
kit, but would think they should have them.
As far as those, it makes no difference if
the bushings were bronze or nylon. Both
will need the same shims. Normally, you
shouldn't need more than a couple per side,
so thats usually what they give you.
The thrust bearing is separate from the
bushing. It's installed when you put the
kingpin in. The shims are usually placed
against the thrust bearing on the closed
side, which is facing up. The open end of
the bearing faces down so you can get grease
into it. The kingpins, bearings, etc are
the same for either drum or disk. My disk
brake 74 F-100 has the same setup as my
68 F-250 which is drums. This is not to say
the parts match between the years though..
If you use the bronze bushings, they must
be reamed to fit, unless they are the new
prereamed type that fit the pin they come
with. But...I've never seen those new types
at the auto parts yet. Only the web. If you
don't have a machine shop that can do it,
or you have a reamer yourself, it would be
easier to just use the nylon. But if you have
a machine shop that can ream bronze bushings,
I would use those. They last a lot longer.
It's possible any kingpin assembly could
need shims, no matter what the parts used
are. Most need a at least one or two. If it
didn't need one, they just got lucky and it
all fit with no slop. On my 68, I think I had to
use one shim on one side, and two on the other.
MK

[Big D's 69]

Man this job doesn't sound like any fun and sounds even more complicated just thinking about it. I guess I need to get my disc setup and check all of this before I install it that way my truck won't be down while all of this is going on.

[dotcentral]

I think the easiest way to install this would have been for me to remove the axles so I could work on it on top of a work bench. Trying to get several shims, the spindle, & the bearing all lined up is very frustrating.

I still need to call some parts stores for more shims.

[QC]

I hurt my elbow so it was too painful to hit things hard with a hammer, so I just took my disc brake axles to the machine shop and had them R & R the king pins. It cost a little more, but to me it was worth it.

[Big D's 69]

I hurt my elbow so it was too painful to hit things hard with a hammer, so I just took my disc brake axles to the machine shop and had them R & R the king pins. It cost a little more, but to me it was worth it.

What did that cost?

[dotcentral]

I got some spare shims from a buddy of mine, and it did the trick. Took 6 shims on the driver's side. I'm taking a break for a few minutes, so thought I'd post what I did before starting on the passenger side spindle.

I knew from trying one evening, that it helps to have lots of daylight. Plus, the fender was off on this side, so it helped even more.

Anyhow, keeping the jack stand under the I-beam, I put the spindle on the axle, with the bearing under the axle and 3 shims to start. Installed kingpin and the thru bolt, put a floor jack under the bottom of the spindle and jacked it up to put a slight load on the spindle. Then using a feeler gauge I measured the gap. It was way off spec last time, over 20/1000 (0.020). Knocked the kingpin down thru the bottom enough to get another shim in. I wound with a total of 6 shims on the driver's side, just kept adding shims, putting the kingpin back in, loading it with the jack & checking to get it between 0.010 & 0.003. I am at 0.005

To help keep everything lined up in the bore I had a screwdriver, a 3/8" extension, and a drift punch that is about 1/8" narrower than the kingpin. Each time I added a shim, the other shims wanted to slide out of position. I would use these tools to help push the shims back into place so the kingpin would pass through.

I hope this helps others. I probably went overboard on tolerances. Seems like a lot of people just put the 2 shims in, skip the seal that goes in the upper bore of the spindle, slap it together and call it good.

BTW, as I was putting the through bolt in for the last time I noticed a large thick washer laying on the floor. I picked it up & it turned out to be 3 shims stacked together. They must have fallen out when I dropped the drum spindle and I didn't notice it. There were 2 other shims on this side, so there was at least 5 shims on it with the old drum setup. Makes me feel better that my measurements are pretty accurate and someone else (Ford or some previous mechanic) had to do a lot of shimming to get it in spec.

I'll try to get a picture of the shim in the upper bore, in case it's not clear what that was all about.

Thanks for putting up with me on this guys.

[dotcentral]

By the way, no one currently is offering shims by themselves that I could find. I called all the local chain stores, Dennis Carpenter's, Blue Oval Truck Parts, Kantner's (spelling?), and a couple of other large mail-order places. They all buy king pin kits premade from somewhere else. Probably some shop in Taiwan spitting them out and selling them to the all the stores.

A buddy was after me to make some out of thin sheet metal, to much work for me. Luckily another friend likes to part out old Fords, happened to save some and bailed me out. Probably the best advice I can offer is whenever you tear a front end down, save the old shims. Who knows when you or a buddy might have to use them.

[dotcentral]

Got the passenger side installed, 4 shims, .010 clearance.

also took a pic of how the seal goes into the upper spindle bore. There is sort of a groove in one side of this thing, so I installed that side up, thinking that it would catch the grease and help hold it in the upper part of the assembly.

The spindle is shown upside down in this picture. A little easier to install it like this.