Is there any special tools or procedures on putting in a king pin kit.

 

If the upper king pin is worn, you will need some form of giant allen wrench (7/8"), to remove. I used a piece of hex shaft from a combine. These pins (cones) are in TIGHT. 700lbs/ft as I recall. Everything else is pretty straight forward if you have a spindle socket to remove the bearings.

 

I agree. BIG tool to remove king pin and looks like it would be a pain to put back in due to torque amount. But, I have replaced the plastic cups without a problem a couple of times as the actual king pin still looked good.

 

I just replaced the plastic cones and springs on mine also. I haven't noticed any bad wear on the king pins on any of the three high mileage trucks I have rebuilt.

 

You probably do NOT have to replace the actual king pins, just the springs and nylon bushings (as said above). However, if you decide to change them you can use the following:

King pin removal tool: Long Acorn style wheel nut threaded over 1/2" cap screw jammed tight, used with 7/8 socket (or pipe wrench in a pinch) and long cheater bar.

Installation torque: 500 to 600 lbft

If you do not have a torque wrench that reads this high, you can use a spring scale and a cheater bar as follows: Drill a hole in the bar and set up your wrench so the center of the hole is 5" to the center of the socket. Attach the spring scale to this hole, and use it to pull the bar. 100lbs on the scale is 100lbs X 5 ft or 500 lbft of torque applied . . .

1/2" drive tools might not survive this operation.

It is, by the way, lb ft, NOT ft lbs despite the new world convention. Ftlbs is a measure of WORK, "a unit of work equal to the work done by a force of one pound acting through a distance of one foot in the direction of the force"

Pound feet and foot pounds represent Cross Products between two vectors, and the order matters.

Funny enough, you never see any book that screws up NewtonMeters



Sorry folks -- just needed to get that out of my system.