King pin advice

wildwilly said:
Glad to find this topic. I just bought a nice front axle at an auction last week. My plan is to first get it powder coated, then build up with mostly new parts. the King pin section has me looking for the best ways of doing the job right myself. The reason for a new axle is that some time in her past, Some ding dong welded studs so to mount modern shocks. I find it to look sooo ugly. Any help on specs and procedures would be great.
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I would not powder cote your axle first. Get all the king pins and check the fit and the perch bolts etc first. Gary:eek:
 
I will add that reaming has a lot of variables.

An inexperienced guy with a straight flute reamer is likely to mess it up.
How many guys are using some reamer that they picked up at a flea market and have no idea of the quality?

A good quality spiral reamer in the hands of a person that is experienced will do an excellent job.

If you have to ask then it is more likely you should pay a machine shop to hone it for you. By the time you pay for a quality reamer and figure out how to use it properly you would be well ahead of the curve having it honed.

The old adage.. A experienced machinist can turn out high accuracy work on worn out crappy machines. A clueless machinist can screw up everything on a new machine and the best tooling.
 
Kevin in NJ said:
I will add that reaming has a lot of variables.

An inexperienced guy with a straight flute reamer is likely to mess it up.
How many guys are using some reamer that they picked up at a flea market and have no idea of the quality?

A good quality spiral reamer in the hands of a person that is experienced will do an excellent job.

If you have to ask then it is more likely you should pay a machine shop to hone it for you. By the time you pay for a quality reamer and figure out how to use it properly you would be well ahead of the curve having it honed.

The old adage.. A experienced machinist can turn out high accuracy work on worn out crappy machines. A clueless machinist can screw up everything on a new machine and the best tooling.
Click to expand...

How does a clueless machinist become an experienced machinist?

Was an experienced machinist once a clueless machinist?

Honing or reaming either one depends on the person doing the job.
You can do an excellent job with either method or you can screw it up with either method.
Bill
 
My LemCo reamer is a precision piece of work that when doing bushings it aligns one set to the other, I haven't seen a sunnen pin hone be able to do that. The only ones I've seen hone the bushings independant of each other - and you can have 2 perfect holes on different axis'.
A proper reamer will ream one bushing from the other bushing so they are sized in alignment of each other. A precise reamer is not to be underestimated.
Reaming or honing is a skill, either is best done by an experienced mechanic.
 
If a person happens to get lucky and find a shop that will even take on the job its not likely that they will be familiar with model A bushings, the size that they should be or the proper clearance . I know that I couldn't find anybody in my area that would touch the job. I got recommendations to use a wood dowell with fine sand paper or a brake cylinder hone. Not all but many still use equipment that is older than me. Just because a machine shop does a job doesn't mean that it is perfect, hone or reamer.
 
I use a spiral flute reamer in my mill. I also manufactured a jig to hold the spindle at the correct angle, allowing me to pass the reamer all the way through so both bushes are on the same axis. No problems so far. I think where the reamer gets a bad name is when a straight flute expanding hand reamer is used.
 
oj said:
My LemCo reamer is a precision piece of work that when doing bushings it aligns one set to the other, I haven't seen a sunnen pin hone be able to do that. The only ones I've seen hone the bushings independant of each other - and you can have 2 perfect holes on different axis'.
A proper reamer will ream one bushing from the other bushing so they are sized in alignment of each other. A precise reamer is not to be underestimated.
Reaming or honing is a skill, either is best done by an experienced mechanic.
Click to expand...


There have many past posts on this site and others, some with some very technical explanations, of how honing is superior to reaming.

I can't believe that even the worst machinist would consider honing the bushings independently. The honing is not done to "size" it is done to "fit" using the kingpin itself. See link below. Any shop that works on larger trucks should either be able to do this or know of a machine shop that can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw0-vPhRuCo
 
there was an article in the Restorer many yrs ago. The writer had come to know the machinist who cut the prototype rear end for the A for Henry (and Henry gave him a car from the line as thanks). That machinist taught the writer to never remove both old bushings at once, but leave one in as a guide for the reamer
 
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