In another thread that Tom was a major help in, I swapped the steering gearbox and now I have return to center problems when making any kind of turns.

The new steering box is faulty so I'm getting a new box.

Having read a bunch of stuff online and on these forums, I decided to pump a bunch of grease in my king pins. I did this with the front end on stands.

The king pins took the grease with no problems. So I decided to go for a drive. The RTC got a little bit better.

I decided to get on the highway (the first time since i bought it a few weeks ago). And the front end shook so bad I got off the exit. Felt like the steering wheel was going to break off.

Driving in the city I feel no vibration.

So just now, I put the van on stands and I take a prybar to the wheels.

I got 1-2mm of up and down play on the kingpins on both sides. The grease inside making gushy noises....

So now I have to replace them. So a few questions. From what I know my van has only racked up 10K miles in the past 15 years with about 160K total...

1) Is there a good write up for the king pins? My Hayes manual is pretty vague...
2) Should I get all new bushings for the front end?
3) DS I beam seems a little loose when I was pushing that wheel up and down with the pry bar (is this due to a bad bushing?)
4) Any write ups on bushings?
5) Any recommendations on king pin and/or bushing sets?
6) If I were to take it to a shop, how many hours am I looking at labor wise?
7) Any adapter I can install on the thing to adjust caster? I read a few threads about it and install looks pretty straight forward, but they all seem to be for ball joints...
8) Any advise on my situation as a whole? I want to get it sorted out and don't mind taking my time on the repairs. I want to use to van as a camper and want the front end to be rock solid.

Thanks guys.

 

I have beat out at least 2 sets, by hand. I've only done it on older F100s, so my info might be wrong. I'd remove the upper and lower kingpin caps and use a "real" torch, which I didn't have, to ensure I melted all that old congealed grease which WILL keep your pins from moving and keep you from driving them out. I'd use carb cleaner or lacquer thinner or maybe mixture of automatic transmission fluid and acetone to ensure I'd cleaned the crap out of it.
I'd ensure I could squirt something like WD-40 in the top and it runs out real fast out the bottom. Once you are positive you have all the old congealed grease out, I'd ensure the zeirdt fittings are nice and clean of old grease and I'd completely grease with fresh grease. I can't recall, but seems I had best luck trying letting suspension hang to grease some and having suspension under compression to get others to take grease.
Then I'd drive to see if any change before I went further.

 

If you plan on keeping the van, do a complete rebuild of the front end - all of it including springs. Do it once, and you will have a great driving van for many years. These front ends are pretty simple. Amazon and Rock Auto sell the parts at good prices. I like Moog. Have it aligned at a quality shop that is familiar with trucks. Good luck.,...jack

 

Haven't had to replace my kingpins yet, but I wouldn't hesitate to take my van into the shop to get this done. I've heard they need to be properly reamed and semi shops may be the most competent at this type of work.

 

It can be VERY, VERY rough. I hear some folks have great luck, I wore a hammer and punches out on ones I have done, just to prove something and why I don't know. I was a lot younger. They do have brass bushings that have to be reamed or you can use Teflon which doesn't have to, but doesn't last as long. I went for brass bushings and had local machine shop do them. I rebuilt everything on the front end and converted from drum to disc on my old F100. BUT, my point was, and still is, you cannot believe how hard old congealed grease can get. Even an air powered grease gun cannot push it all out and replace with fresh.
Also, if you're having vibrations come up at a certain speed, like higher speed than when it's smooth, you might be feeling a u-joint going and it's transmitting vibration through the vehicle. Just something to also look at, and I've had bad tires before and bent rims that will also do that.

 

I found a local alignment guy that seemed to know what he was talking about.

Got quoted $500 for labor to do king pins, machining, bushings, struts and springs. He was short and to the point and I am very tempted to drop the van off to him. But I'll probably end up doing this on my own slowly.

I bought MOOG kingpin set, i-beam bushings and radius arm bushings.

I contacted vendor about the MOOG set and was told that bushings are metal. I'm guessing that is equivalent to brass??

I've been looking into adapters to adjust casters on these vans. I want maximum possible. I would have a shop install and do this for me.

I think my van was lifted by PO. Seems a little high. Anyone know what stock height is? I think this is contributing to my return to center problems.

Any recommendations on springs and shocks? I want a SOLID ride.

What are you guys running on yours?

Mine has the 460 and it guzzles gas, but I am kind of getting attached to it. I want to do this right.