Re: King Pin Thrust Bearing Clearance

Posted by Joel Rapose on Sep. 14, 1998 at 09:29:58

In Reply to: King Pin Thrust Bearing Clearance
posted by Roger Dean on September 13, 1998 at 09:49:34

: I am doing a total restoration and am at the stage of bench-rebuilding the front end. I've just installed the king pins and find that the thrust bearing under the head of each pin turns quite freely, even after using all the steel shims that came with the king pin set (2 on each side). I have .004" clearance between the head of the king pin and thrust bearing on one side and .007" on the other. All the advice I can find warns me to make certain the weight of the car is carried by the bearings and not by the felt washer cup at the bottom of the assembly. This is all fine advice, but on a bench assembly where there is no real weight on the axle, how do you know what "good enough" is for the clearance? As it was, I had a some trouble getting the spindle assembly over the axle.My guess is that anything less than about .010" is probably good enough because all that will happen is that the felt washer cup will compress until the load is carried by the bearing. But I just don't know for sure. Can anyone help??? Thanks.

You might try shims for an 60's Volkswagen...they had king pins and I often use them for front wheel bearing shims..
Now...ONE of Fords screw-ups..is that he never had a right and
left axle pinch bolt..when you cinch them up..it will tighten one side and loosen one side...often it will make the tight side so snug it causes the king pin to pinch when loaded...thus hard steering...what ya end up doing is putting way too much clearance on the tight side and letting it pull itself into proper place..ya really won't know until the whole weight of the car is on it...what I do is use two pieces of wet wax paper under the tires...makes em turn easy...don't hook up the steering link and the wheels should turn easily with the same amount of drag...it will be really noticible if ya got one too tight...