Front End Rebuild Questions

[Ian Curtis]

After putting up with some low speed front end wobble for several years, I figured it was time to do something about it.

There was no detectable side to side motion on the wheels before I pulled everything apart, and the kingpins don't have any detectable wear or grooves.

I've pulled apart all the spindle arms and the pitman arm, and they're all worn. The spindle arms were about 0.995 in the least worn direction and 0.965 in the most worn direction. The pitman arm was much worse, the worn dimension was 0.920 (it appears one face was never greased). The Les Andrews book just says they need to be replaced if at all out of round, so I plan to replace all of them.

The last remaining problem as far as disassembly goes is how to remove the left spindle arm. So far, no amount of penetrating oil and whaling on it has gotten the nut to move at all. Its kind of a weird shape to hold, what's the right way to hold it for future attempts to get the nut to move? Haven't really found a good way to clamp it in a vice, and I'm worried if I reinstall it in the car that I might damage the kingpins or the bushings with the shockload from hitting a wrench with a hammer. Any ideas?

It looks like everyone sells teflon bearing surface kits for rebuilding the drag link and tie rods. Mine still have metal bearing surfaces. I assume that those are harder than the spindle balls so the balls wear not those? While everything is apart is the thing to do to replace the metal bearing surfaces with the teflon ones?

Left spindle arm that needs to be removed


Another view of stubbornly stuck spindle arm before degreasing & whaling


Example of pitman arm wear