Just an FYI if anyone is interested. Sometimes a guy just needs a picture for some project that you have sitting there, maybe missing a part or whatever so I'll put this up in case it helps anyone. Not to say mine is even right in every respect, as anyone who's worked on rusty gold knows a LOT can happen in a vehicle's service life!

Just my plow truck so I'm running the stock setup and not changing anything. Parts are still available. Thankfully, no snow on the forecast yet, should be no problem.

I had to order bearings and some new shims, I'll update as I re-assemble. Yes I have a new knuckle seal I forgot to include that in the picture. Haven't opened up the other side, but should more or less be the same.


Keep er between the ditches folks.

 

And in case you need some manual help. I think there is a little closed knuckle info.

 

Nice! Thanks!

One step I'm going to modify, (given this truck won't be seeing the highway) is that I think I'll skip the lighter "pourable grease" and just pack the kingpin bearings (tapered rollers) with a nice thick chassis grease like I use in the 40's and 50's non-tapered roller wheel bearings. I'll put standard grease in the knuckle. OEM spec was gear oil but by all accounts that just leaks out - and I'd expect the same here. But it doesn't make sense to me to run the lighter fluids: The king pin bearings being tapered rollers, should work fine with a heavy chassis grease, it stays in place pretty good and there's pretty limited opportunity for it to migrate out. And the u-joint is just a standard ujoint - external grease or oil splashing around won't do anything for that.

Whomever repacked this one last time, used chassis grease in the kingpin bearings and in the knuckle generally and both were still well packed. There was pitting in those bearings from what looked like probably an earlier problem that is now beyond serviceability, but that last repack itself is intact.

Anyway, just my own musings on that subject. Might be that on daily driving/highway use there is more need for the oil to churn up and feed that upper kingpin bearing. But, for my use I just can't see it.

 

Good to know that closed knuckles can run GREASE.

 

Closed knuckle grease brings out a lot of opinions. From my research, a lot of guys run a slurry mix of gear oil and grease. I have heard of others using Cornhead grease. Others suggest the closed knuckle lube sold by TorqueKing.

Gear oil will leak out, especially since a lot of the knuckle sealing surfaces are pitted after 50 years.

If you choose to only run greased bearings, don’t forget that the U-joints need lubrication too.

 

100% - like I say, this is just my plow truck so it won't see more than 20 Miles a year. It's permanently chained as well, so we're at LOW speeds.

Also, the ujoints are normal ujoints. So I fail to see how having oil or grease splashing around in there will do a great job of lubricating those, considering the caps are sealed. Grease them and commit to pulling it apart every now and again. No real easy solution there.

The cornhead grease I have to order in; But there are many equivalents out there that I could order (believe it's just "00 weight" grease) and NAPA can get some, I just don't think that for my particular application, it would even be a great idea. Slow speeds only, so I'm thinking any benefit from a "pourable grease" would be lost and in my case the better option is a standard grease. Only one way to find out for sure!

Next spring I'll pull it apart and see how things held up. Despite the low miles these trucks can get a real workout.

 

As I'm waiting on some parts, cleaning things up and had to repair a hub bolt someone had sheared off in the depths of time. They'd attempted to drill it out as well so the hole was not going to be a nice one to drill into.

A number of years ago I got one of these Mini Mills on sale at Princess Auto (the Canuck equivalent of Harbour Freight). I've always loved mills and lathes and have used it a lot. One day I'd like to upgrade this, but it does a great job for little tasks like this in the meantime. Thankfully the hole (unthreaded at the first 1/2" or so) was an absolute perfect fit for one of my endmills (I never looked but presume it was 3/8). I used the endmill to face off the uneven surface so I could be sure of a good centered starting point. By using a close fitting endmill, the X & Y axis can be properly aligned to ensure straight and centered drilling operations after,.



Next I used a center drill in a collet (no wobbling). Even though the plan was to use an extractor, you never know - so I wanted to make sure if I had to drill and tap, that the hole was as centered as possible. These bolts have to go through a long support hole so there isn't a lot of leeway without hogging that out, if the threads aren't centered. Followed that up with a drill through of the busted chunk for the extractor - then pound in an extractor.



I don't show it here but I did use some oxy-acetylene on it; the extractor didn't want to budge at first without some heat. But in the end, I won.

With that done, I wanted to put some longer studs in this unit so I can (if necessary) space my front wheels out a bit to ensure clearance with front chains. Dorman 610-290 studs are perfect. Direct replacement on the splined end and about 1/2" longer.



Keep er between the Navigational Buoys

 

Well my intention here was to get one of the kids to photograph the re-assembly process for interests sake. Unfortunately as the parts arrived we ended up under a snowfall warning so I ended up re-assembling the ole girl in a hurry and in the dark.

But the link to the manual 77&79F250 provided above in this thread covers it off.

The only thing I had to work out was that the manual speaks about (this is for the 12 bolt not the 8 bolt) shims only in the lower king pin cap & in the upper under the steering arm on the LH side (which connects to the steering ram/pitman arm). Logic dictates that there should be shims under all the caps.

Since the manual specified lowers I started with the lowers and torqued the LOWER caps, left the uppers snug but not torqued. Then checked my steering effort using a beam type torque wrench on a king pin knuckle bolt. Remove the cap and install/remove shims as required until I had the requisite effort with the lowers. Then I repeated that on the uppers. That seems to have worked well.

For anyone interested Torque King 4x4 has the complete front end rebuild kit for these. I actually sourced the Timken Bearings and knuckle seals readily enough inside Canada so just ordered the shims from TK - mainly because shipping up here from the US can take forever; but thankfully in this case their shims showed up FAST. I was just going to make some as a stop gap but that's a lot of extra messing around and when I realized they were already across the border, I just waited for em. In the end I didn't need much shimming on any of the caps but I'm glad to have the kits on hand.

It's worth mentioning that everyone seems to list the metal seal retainer and it is often sold as part of the kit. It is just sheet metal so if you're in a bind it would be easy to fabricate. Mine was fine, I cleaned it up and painted it. Reused it.

For anyone interested the Kingpin bearing part #'s are:

Timken 23256 Race
Timken 23100 Bearing

This is just a plow truck so as I say above, I've used standard chassis grease on the king pin bearings. It won't be moving fast enough to get any benefit that might be had from using a more fluid grease. The wheel bearings are in your standard sealed hub design, so again those are stand alone and greased separately; and the ujoints are your run of the mill sealed ujoints, internally greased so they also won't get any benefit. I made sure they were greased and carried on. Anyway, just more rambling but hopefully interesting if not useful to someone. A photo of the reassembled knuckle for the fun of it:

 

I appreciate you posting about this. I’m pulling my LP Dana 60 on Friday to do this same job. My trunnion bearings have failed and it’s causing my wheel lean.

How difficult was it to remove the bearing races? Any other issues you ran into?

 

It was pretty easy to remove the races, I just used a punch and got them out with no damage. I wasn't sure how they'd go back in with the lousy angle I'd have to swing a hammer, but it wasn't an issue in the end either.

Other issues: The threads on the king pin caps are all fine thread and seem to have a shallow engagement - I suggest NOT chasing them with a tap unless it's necessary, I ended up having to do some extra repairs to one of the holes. I'll have to revisit that in the summer I think but it'll be fine for today.

Good luck! Wish I had been able to take some pictures of that.

 

Not really "closed knuckle maintenance" and you can find these heavy duty hubs on other applications, but part of this truck so posting it here: I had to repair one of my hubs. The RH plastic **** had broken so the assembly was "unsprung" for lack of a better word. It seemed to work but it would have been constantly locked - but probably able to bounce in and out. Didn't see any wear on the teeth though, so no damage done.

Thankfully I found some new plastic ***** on ebay and proceeded to replace 'em. I'll replace the passenger side another day, it's not broken just tight to turn.

Nice and simple but strong design. Here you can see where the ears broke off the old one on the left. They come apart by flipping the chrome end upside down and removing that snap ring you can see on the upper left. The new ones didn't come with seals, luckily the old seals were fine. They are (old and new) a tight fit against the surface and once you take these apart, it's clear why these can be tight to turn - and why LIGHT oil is the better choice to lube these.


The pin has to go through an angled slot, when you turn the **** it bears on the pin and forces the gear in the hub into the corresponding gear that is snap-ring retained into the end of the axle shaft. I should have taken more pictures for anyone working with these.


Hope that's of interest to someone! When I get around to the passenger side I'll try and take more photos.

 

Just to add on: Dennis Carpenter sells the red plastic hubs as well. And Torque King makes the chrome metal part. I believe theirs is a billet aluminum though so you’d probably want to buy 2 to make both sides match.

 

mwoj, that is great to know!

 

Just for clarification, from the factory the axle "U" joints were not sealed. Part of the reason for the gear oil (I use grease with gear oil) was to lube the axle joints. That was the reason the instruction manual recommended locking the hubs and driving the truck in 2WD every so often. The axles would spin and the "U" joints would be lubed as well as the upper king pin. The gear oil also would tightly coat the ball and keep it from getting rusty, in theory. My 73 had, and the 75 I own now has non-sealed axle U joints. In the summer when I'm not using the 4WD I still lock the hubs and drive around in 2WD for a day or two to keep things lubed. The U joints can be replaced with sealed ones but, not all are sealed and still need the lube, whether it's gear oil, grease, or both.
Mark.

 

Oh that makes a lot of sense, thanks for clarifying that.

This truck is coming together nicely and I'll end up putting some more miles on her after all ahead of schedule.