VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - GENERAL Trucks and Vans New spindles

Any of you guys know where I can buy new spindles for my 48 Chevy 3/4 ton P.U.? The spindles on the truck were bushed at one time or another. I'm thinking that's not right but I very well could be wrong?

Do you mean they may have been damaged and bushed back to original size as a repair? At the inner bearing location?
Some good used spindles should be easy to find. I might have them N.O.S. but it will be next week before I could look for them.
Mike

Turns out, after talking to our local automotive machine shop owner, that the spindle's are just fine. I have a new question. The king pins are .923 and the bore in the axle is .935 but more like .945 near the ends. How much clearance is desired? Should I buy a Stock? .010 over? or should I get a .020 over and hone the axle bore to fit?

.002" clearance-go to .020" O.S.

I would think you need to use a reamer.

The chevy manual says to use kind of a specialized reamer. It has a pilot so the reamer stays on the center line. The auto machinist that I mentioned says he uses a hone to open the bore. I don't know how much can be removed and how long it would take with a hone. Anybody heard of using a hone to open up a bore by .020?

With a conventional hone it could be rather slow.A reamer that is long enought to pass thru both bushings at the same time should be used...to make both holes in perfect alignment with each other.

I see those reamers on eBay every once in a while.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm thinking that a .020 oversize king pin kit would come with spindle bushings properly sized. The reaming that I'm talking about would be done to the axle bore so the over size king pins will fit?

The king pin bushings would be installed (pressed into) the spindle.This causes them to collaspe slightly so they will require reaming.Yes,the eye on the axle would need to be enlarged enough to allow the OS pin to slip in.

Who sells .020 oversize king pin kits for the 3/4 ton? Thanks ChevGene for the clarification. It's all clear now! I gonna try to figure a way to hold the axle on my Bridgeport and use a boring head to open up the holes. The spindles will be easier.

Joel , try turning the axle over and mounting it on the spring pad , then just tilt the milling head over to the 7 degrees ( or whatever the spec is ) .

The hone that will be used by the machine shop is likely a Sunnen (brand) machine. It pumps cutting oil onto the job while in progress. He has a variety of mandrells, both in diameter and length, and will have one long enough to reach through both bushings at one time and keep the bore straight.
Shops use these machines for sizing pistons for pins, reconditioning connecting rods, king pin work and a variety of other jobs. It would have worked fine for the axle resizing if the machinist is competent, which I'm sure he is.
An old time remedy for your problem is to heat the end of the axle cherry red and hammer the pin area, from the three available directions, against a back-up of some sort. This will shrink the pin hole which can then be reamed or honed back to standard size.
BE SURE you have the oversize parts in hand before oversizing your axle. Good Luck.

Mike

Learned a lot from the start of the post till now. Over sized king pin sets are not available anywhere as far as I've been able search. Purchased a standard set from the Filling station. I'm making some stainless bushings to get the axle bore back to the .9235 dimension. That's probably closer than what was originally done in 1948 production. Mounting the axle on the spring pad and tilting the head to bore the holes is a good idea. (The spec turns out to be 7 deg 10 min) The factory probably used the same set up to do the axle machining in the first place. Thanks to Dusty for that one.
I got the brackets back from the water jet shop. These are for mounting the calipers on the rear. Will be designing a set for the front soon. Thanks to Mike, Gene, MrMack and Dusty for you advice and info. It's invaluable to have this resource.