King Pins and Spindles Tech Talk

Hi this is Heath, Speedway Motors Tech Talk and on this episode we're going to talk about kingpins. First we're going to start with some standard kingpins and then move into our deluxe kingpins. We get several calls about the deluxe kingpins so we really wanted to kind of really concrete those in for you to see how they go together and you know give you a little bit more confidence when you put them together. First we have our 37 to 41 Ford spindles that's really the only style that we sell. There are obviously lots of different spindles from 28 to 48 the majority of them you know will interchange in between axles half-ton truck and car spindles. They interchange from 28 to 47 and then 48 the half-ton truck's changed they had a little bit different dimensions. So we'll start with our spindle and a lot of people will sometimes throw this in and get it put on like that and they wonder why the top of their wheel is really tilted in. When you put these on you know you want obviously to have some caster but you also want to have this mostly parallel with the world that way when everything goes together you're still going to have a little bit of caster but it's still going to be installed correctly. These are our fitted spindles with kingpins so they are extremely nice and worth the money you know basically they're already fitted and reamed and go together really smooth. And when you get your parts you'll see that you have a couple little pieces and parts in here you got some bearings we got some kingpin stops and felt washers with caps as well as some shims. Now I have installed lots of these before with Speedway Motors axles and our kingpins and I've rarely had to use these but I'll show you what you would need to do in order to use those. So you know basically the kingpin has a notch in it it's got to be aligned with the axle in order to hold it in. You're gonna put a cap on and the lip will be facing down and the felt washer will go under the cap and that's gonna go on your kingpin first and slide up like that. And then you're gonna go ahead and fit it into the kingpin and what you're gonna do is you'll have your axle here and you're gonna slide this kingpin all the way through the axle and your bearing here has two sides right so one side is flush the other side is where they put it together and you want to keep the top side the flush side up to keep the elements out of the bearing. So that's gonna go there you're gonna line up your kingpin notch the locator notch and you're gonna just install it and they may take a little bit of a tap at the the top of it to get it to finally go flush where you can put your your locator in there. And the locators are pretty specific you basically put the threaded end into your axle first that way you don't see the nut from the backside and it looks a little bit better and cleaner install and that's gonna go ahead and lock that kingpin into your axle and then put your put your washer and nut on it and tighten it up. Now let's say you get it all put together and you see that you can take this spindle there's a little bit of movement in there or a little bit of movement in here you can take a feeler gauge in between the axle boss and the kingpin and it's about 6/100 if it's any more than that then you may have to put one or two shims in there just depending and then you will have a really tight fitting kingpin that's will be installed correctly. So that's the standard kingpin set it's a you know for the most part pretty simple where the the difficult part gets in is when we step to the 37 to 41 deluxe kingpins. These they do require a lot more work but they they offer some value they are gonna last a lot longer you know that technology with the standard kingpins is obviously old and they've stepped it up here we've got little needle bearings that help the kingpin ride they wear a lot better the way you grease them is gonna be a lot better for for a long lasting life time for your your front axle set up. So this is can go both ways like if you buy our brand new spindles from Speedway you're gonna have to press out the new bushings that are in here which is no big deal it comes with the tool to press those out so you can just get rid of those and you're gonna put in the needle bearings that take place of those bushings and you know like we said we talked about how you're gonna put this together okay this is right side up well when you press out the old bushings and you press in the new bearing there's two different sizes in the 37 to 41. So one is short and one is just a little bit longer and when you do that and this is flipped over you have the shorter bearing going in first and you're gonna press that in all the way until it's flush with the bottom of the spindle. So once you got that in then you can go ahead and press your longer one in until it's flush with the bottom of the spindle and then you'll have your starting point. So once those are pressed in you're gonna take your kingpins and these also have a locator notch of course and one is longer than the other right so you got a short side and a long side and you can go ahead and check your axle and make sure that it's correct but mostly your longer side is gonna go in first so you're going to already have your bearings pressed in here you're gonna have your axle inserted you're gonna also take a bearing for the lower portion of it have that setting there and then press that in. And once that's all setting in there then you're able to actually take your other side and press the bearings in again with the short going in first and the long going in last. And then once that's all installed then you're able to put your locator pin in threads first and then this is where the the problems kind of come with the installation because you got all these other parts and they're not like the standard kingpin right so you're going what the heck is all this stuff and this these pieces really have a a really good point to them because they're what's gonna make servicing them easy the the life of them to last a lot longer. So each one of these kits comes with little caps and these caps are what you're going to put on the top and bottom of each spindle mostly on all of our kits the top portion of these caps are gonna be with a felt washer so it's gonna be like the standard kingpin set but a little bit different. When you put the felt in the cap and then the cap is the lip side down you would install this in your the top of your kingpin like this and then you have a little grease zerk that goes in top so that's actually what's going to lock that cap in and it's also gonna allow you to grease the kingpin and you can see that there's holes in this kingpin to allow there to be grease in the entire setup so you know where normally I would anti-seize everything with these kits you can still do some anti-seize on this when before you put them in but also you know grease them to keep them going for a long long time. The bottom is where it kind of gets tricky you see that there are some o-rings here and these o-rings kind of throw people off because you know what is that doing in a kingpin set well on the bottom of them of your kingpin some of them are different some of them are form different some of them were made different from from the beginning so when you do that you need a smaller cap like this and an o-ring and that's what will seal the bottom up. So where you would normally have you know nothing like on the standard kingpin set you'll have something that holds a cap in kind of helps keep the moisture out and then also you have the grease zerk which will hold the cap in and allows you to grease it. So I hope that really clear some things up with those because it does throw people off and and you know even though you may have done a bunch of standard kingpins and and you want something that lasts a little bit longer then you know this kind of kit it does have does require extra work but it is a much better set of kingpins and and worth the money in my eyes. You know there's so many differences and kingpins throughout the years from 28 to 48 I mean I could talk for hours about you know just the differences between year to year because they didn't change every year but certain specific groups of years were different. Some of them you know before before 35 would have bolt on steering arms and in certain years 28 through 31 Model A's they have the bolt on steering arms and then 32 through 4 will have a different configuration and then 37 through 41 the round back style they call it which is what we stock are a little bit different from the 42 to 48. So that's the next kit that we get quite a few calls on because it is different between the 37 to 41 setup even though the installation is basically the same. A 42 to 48 spindle they call them a square back and they are of a square design with rounded corners so that's one way to identify them. And again we could have an entire conversation about just identifying early Ford spindles because believe it or not there are so many differences in them. But the only real difference of the 42 to 48 kit is the kingpin is longer so you know it's gonna have a different configuration from the factory where sometimes you would have the bearing from the factory in a different spot. Our deluxe kits install the same way so we're still gonna have the bearing on the bottom. Everything's basically gonna go in the same as our other kit but you can see here the 42 to 48 they're both the same size so it doesn't really matter which way you install them except for we like to see that the lettering on them is facing up. So they're in there you know put them both facing up but same thing you know the kits come with this tool to press out the bushings so if you have an old set or early Ford set of king or spindles excuse me you're able to press out the old bushings and then install the bearings in the same manner as we talked about in the 37 to 41 kit. So the only difference really with this is that on these you are almost always going to have the smaller cap on the bottom with the o-ring and let's say that's you go when you put this together and you're starting to almost be done with it and you have your cap and your felt washer and you put it on and you put this greaser zerk in to lock that cap in and let's say that well the the grease zerk bottoms out before you're really tight or it bottoms out before you're tight to the cap we also include these little washers in the kit that allow you to you know make up that difference. So if you bottom out your caps a little loose go ahead and add a washer or two until you get it tight and the the grease zerk is installed properly. There's lots of different things about these the spindles that can cause you aches and pains you know maybe not identifying your spindles properly or you know maybe getting a set that you were told was early Ford and finding out that you know they're either worn out or somebody has messed with them or machined them or modified them so you know there are there are a lot of value and purchasing a brand new spindle from us you know what it is you know what's gonna fit together and it really helps and saves you time. We understand being traditional and and having that traditional build and using early Ford spindles they have lots of benefits the steering arms are forged into them you're able to heat and bend them around some things to to to clear some steering but if you're not able to find those good condition early Ford spindles especially in the years that you like 37 to 48 you know there's there's good value at $299 you can get a set of kingpins, spindles, and everything already fitted together that will for the most part go right on any one of our early Ford i-beam or tube axles and look great. So you know I hope that this helps you if you do have any other questions or you feel I didn't explain something extremely in-depth you can give us a call and we will help you put this together and be happy with your install and and you know have a good little build with your hot run so. I'd like to thank you for joining me at Speedway Tech Talk and I hope to see you soon.

Channel: Speedway Motors

Views: 13,647

Rating: 4.9587631 out of 5

Keywords: suspension, king pin, king pins, kingpins, installation

Id: 020_HqJi1e8

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019