Topic: Message #1029803

[kiyul4130]

Once I had everything put all back together and was about to put the tires back on, I did a shake down of the steering with my hands to make sure everything was tight. The tie rod had the usual small movement and twist with the heims but there was a clunking going on some where. I chased it up the draglink to the pitman arm and got a huge scare. The bolt I welded into my arm was broken. Im so glad I caught it the day before we left. That would have been a huge failure on the trail and a expensive trip to fly across country, go through the whole truck and have the draglink fall on the ground the first 10 minutes after unloading it of the trailer. I redrilled the arm and threw in a grade 8 (3/4") bolt and welded the head to the arm. Theres a lot of stress on that bolt. The sector shaft looked good when I pulled the arm.






The problem with the bronze kingpin bushings were that it would not seat around the kingpin correctly because the roll pin included with the bushings were too big. C&M Performance supplied 1/4" roll pins. If you look at the factory plastic pucks, they have the smallest donger coming off them that just barely keeps the bushing from spinning around the kingpin. I went with a 1" long 5/32 roll pin that I cut in half. The pin was small enough to fall into the knuckle but big enough to where it wouldnt get in between the knuckle and bronze bushing and cause a bind in there when steered. It instantly solved the problem. The knuckle and high steer arm seated much better and I was finally able to get a preload. Before the knuckle wouldnt even move. As for the driver side, I could never get the bronze bushing to work. I was running short on time and just threw my in good shape plastic bushing back in there. The bronze bushings are from C&M performance. I still need to get a hold of them and tell them whats going on. All the lower kingpin bearings were replaced and the races were seated good and solid. I couldnt figure out why the knuckle would tighten up so hard it couldnt hardly be moved, with 2 people trying to steer it. To the eye the factory and bushing and bronze ones looked the same. I wish I would have mic'd them.