Technical Axle repair

I have a v8-60 axle that needs the king pin bores bored out and bushed back to standard. I'm looking for a machine shop with no luck. Does anyone have a suggestion? Thanks

 

You might be calling shops that use CNC equipment, do some scouting around and find a shop with manual machines, they take one-off jobs.

 

Just a tip that might be useful to you. When I needed my machinist buddy to bore out the kingpin area of a Dodge tube axle he said there was no where to grab it firmly to hold in the mill. I welded a 6x6 plate to the underside of the kingpin boss with a few short beads. Then he could clamp that down to the table and not worry about being square with the world. We stuck a wedge under the other end that stuck up in the air, and clamped it firmly to the wedge.

 

I had the same problem with the kingpin bores. My understanding is that there was oversized kingpins available in the past that were just slightly larger than the stock 0.819 size. I wasn’t able to find any of those. However a Ford F100 kingpin is 0.859 inch diameter. If you are going to use 1942-48 Ford square flange spindles, these kingpins are the same length as those for the standard ones. However you will also need to bore the spindle bushing bores to fit the slightly larger bushings.

I used an adjustable hand reamer to resize the bushing bores and the kingpin boss of the axle. The axle was relatively easy and the reamer was long enough to be supported completely in the axle bores so that the bores stayed square to the flat surfaces. The spindles are not easy to ream however. They are forged from some really tough material, and with a new sharp adjustable hand reamer, I could only cut 4 to 5 thousandths per pass.

Another way to fit the F100 kingpins to the spindles would be to make new kingpin bushings from bronze bearing stock. Machine the od for a slight press fit, bore the id leaving enough to ream or hone to size for the kingpins. Then drill holes for the grease fitting.

 

Give Anson Axle in Georgia a call.
530-537-9322

I have done 3 transactions with him, all positive.

 

Solid axles are still used in 18 wheel stuff. If the other suggestions don't get you fixed up, look for local heavy equipment shops. Your project will look small to them! Make sure they have a good rep and the tools to do the job, like always.

 

Yep, we have a local heavy equipment shop here. They've done numerous King pin bores for us thru the years.

Now I will admit that it seems in the last 5 years or so that some jobs that a shop may do for another shop they won't do for walk in customers. They make enough money off of regular customers that they don't need to do one off work. And they will for another shop out of common courtesy or friends with the other shop.

We had an exhaust shop that would do some really hard exhaust work for us as far as getting big tubes to fit in small places and around stuff BUT they didn't want us to tell people they did it because they had no interest in doing it daily. Said they could make as much or more doing oem jobs vs custom...

...

 

The problem you have with the axle is not unusual for the sixty tube axle. The V-8 tube axle is extremely thin trying to bore it and then add sleeves will only weaken the axle structure. Have you tried the .010 oversize kingpins? Even if it was a good idea to do holding it in a milling machine to do the job would be extremely difficult.
Ronnieroadster

 

Try Art Morrison, would they want to do it? Probably not. But they may know somebody who does that type of work. Always been really friendly to me in person and on the phone. Talk nice to them and you may get a shop tour, very impressive. Stop by in a hot rod, they're car people. Added bonus, you're close. Good luck.

John

 

EVERYONE, thanks for your input. You have all given me some good ideas.
I hate not being able to do these things myself.
After I get this worked out, I'll post the fix.

 

Axle repair. This is the query. Sounds like you’re going to have multiple options to consider.

 

Many simple repairs have become lost Art ,
Like trying to fined TV repair shop

 

So true my friend, so true.

 

You need a job shop machine shop that as mentioned before uses manual machines for one off projects. Still the setup time to get the axle mounted right so that the axle is positioned correctly to be bored. sleeved and bored/honed to fit is going to probably be more time consuming than the actual machine work. I could give you some ideas here in the Yakima Valley but don't know about any on the west side.