Joel Widell asked:
> Should I, from a cost effectiveness standpoint and for ease of
> replacement, purchase rebuilt kingpins/trunnions? Victoria British has them
> on sale for $299 pair, $100 off regular, ready to bolt on.. If not, what is
> the viable alternative, as I want to do the job right the first (and hopefully
> last) time, but don't want to go crazy on the price.
Tim Nagy added:
> Are you sure the king pins are bad...if they don't bind, and don't have
> excess play, is there a need to replace? Anyone...?
Hi all,
At 300K miles, I replaced the kingpins on my '67 B. This fixed a clunk that had
started about 100K miles earlier :-}. YMMV
A viable alternative to buying rebuilt kingpins is to have your kingpins
rebuilt. The downside to this is that your car will be down for the time it
takes to rebuild and replace them. I was lucky to get the front suspension off
of a totalled car for $20 so I have a spare set of used kingpins that I had
rebuilt and then swapped on in a day. This is an important consideration for me
since my B is my only transportation these days; the 1100's aren't registered.
A rebuild kit for both sides is on sale at Victoria British for 89.95. It cost
me $100 in labor to have my spare kingpins rebuilt by a shop (I don't have the
reamer). That makes the total $100 less than the price of exchange rebuilt
kinpins. I'm sure that the professional Britcar mechanics on the list can give
you an exact estimate for rebuilding your kingpins, and may even be able to do
it for you on an exchange basis.
Denise Thorpe
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