@gdrummer , where are you located? I have a reamer and while I have only done a couple spindles, if you are close, we could knock this out quickly.
once again, thanks for all the replies and trove of great info. that's why the HAMB is so great. i will be returning the needle bearing set, ordering a std set and keeping my eyes out for a reamer. if anyone out there has one for sale, please reach out. there is a swap meet in tucson on 11/1 i'll be looking for one there. if i find one, i'll pick it up if not, i'll be bringing them to my local machine shop. cheers!
Pretty sure I did, and got some good experienced reply’s. The guy in the video said .001to .0015 fit as well. Or are you referring to something else?
Look for .814. The short one in the picture is the most common version to find. The longer one is more uncommon; but a better design. Both work OK. Most I come across are good; either unused or maybe used once or twice.
i've used a brake hone on flathead lifter bores, and once asked the young mechanics at work if they reamed kingpin bushings that way: (crickets chirping). i bought a ford reamer set from j.c. whitney decades ago, but it wasn't very satisfactory!
I found mine on ebay. They weren't expensive, but there was some luck involved. The longer type acts like a pilot to keep the 2 bushings in line. If you're doing it by hand, with the spindle clamped in a vise, that's the only type i would buy. I do have a short .814 reamer that i'll use after, just to clean them up.
^^^^^^ What @linechaser32 says Back when I did kingpin jobs at the rate of 2-3 a week, I researched reaming versus honing. The results were the reaming would leave little peaks and valleys on the surface of the bushing, where the honing gave a uniform surface finish. The downside was that once the peaks wore down, the pin/bushing clearance increased and the wear rate went up. FWIW, this was on big trucks in a quest to extend steer tire life to 100K miles, but the principle is the same. Sort of like blueprinting, or is close enough good enough? You decide.
I just got a set honed at machine shop for my T. 70.00 out the door Tried the needle bearing route and determined never again, you cannot remove bearings and replace like bushings if you screw up[a expensive lesson] I am going to buy a reamer or if lucky a old sunnen hone
Henry's engineers may have thought needle bearings would be better but bushing were adequate and much cheaper which is why you got bushings.
Henry’s engineers did try needle bearings. They used them in the steering box on the sector in 1936. And never again. Tell you anything?
If I'm reading oj's question right; it has not been answered. Here is what I've done. If the bores in the axle are loose; it is pretty easy to put an undersize pin* in the axle, heat the eye up with a rosebud, and shrink the eye to the pin with a hammer. Hammer some and knock the pin out right away while it is still hot. Let it cool some and repeat until it feels right. Once reduced, ream the axle to fit a new pin. Use an adjustable reamer for a tight fit; a dedicated .814 Ford kingpin reamer is too big in diameter. *I made an undersized pin by putting an old kingpin in a lathe and reducing the unworn center (the part that was in the axle) with a sander.
As a machinist in the Air Force I did a lot of work overhauling flight controls. Ailerons, rudders, articulating rotor heads etc. The ones that were the most demanding were the machine-to-fit bushings on the H-60 folding stabilators (think helicopter rear wing). Something like 30 bushings and bearings in a relatively small area with harmonic dampeners etc. Those bushings were made of beryllium copper and they were super tough. They also had spherical bearings that were lined with phenolic, pressed into glued-in bearing shell liners, which were also reamed after being adhered to the airframe. Anyway Sikorski supplied us with a kit to completely service the stabilator. Inside that kit were carbide piloted reamers. I had never seen that in the automotive world (dealership mechanic 1988-1996) and was really impressed at the concept and especially the performance. By the time I took that position, the reamers were mostly dull and the job was unnecessarily difficult, what did I know? I looked into buying new ones and it turned into this whole friggin contractual / proprietary thing and I would have had to buy them by the dozen @$1,500 each individual size reamer X about 3 or 4 reamers X 3 stabilator kits. So one day I had the bright idea to sharpen the reamers, which I quickly learned required special equipment. So I found a local shop to sharpen every carbide piloted reamer we had from the primary kit as well as the deployment kit, and even the (shhh) secret kit the the crew chiefs had stashed away. When I got the reamers back from sharpening, they worked effortlessly. Now I understood why the kit only came with a handle with which to turn the reamers. We were using a big drill and lots of pressure! That's why training and mentorship is so important, two things that were not available to me at the time. Years later I learned how to sharpen reamers myself on a proper machine, which I find quite rewarding. So much so that I bought a simple tool grinder thinking I would save a bunch of money sharpening and regrinding machine tools, which hasn't happened yet. What does this have to do with Model As, king pins and Henry Ford? NOTHING HAHA. Have a good weekend. Edit; a reamer could never possibly out perform a hone. Simply because of the relatively minuscule number of cutting surfaces on a reamer compared to a stone which has a bazillion little granules. Sikorsky designed the system to be reamed because honing on the aircraft and especially in theater is simply not practical, the desired outcome could be met with a reamer.
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