Re: Urgent Online Advice Needed; re, King Pins..

Posted by BH On 2009/8/23 15:24:40

Yes, some tapered locking pins use nuts to help draw them tight, but not all.

Just a year ago, we had an old IHC grain truck referred to the shop I was working at, and it had tapered pins (with no nuts) that just wouldn't budge. This one had TWO locks per king pin - one from each direction, IIRC. Seemed like all the punch and hammer method did was swell the locking pin tighter - guessing it was rust bound. However, heating with a torch didn't seem to help, and we weren't equipped with a dedicated press for such work. We resorted to drilling them out as described above.

Even after that, it took a lot of heat from a torch to get the king pins to loosen up, but once they started responding to the message relayed from the sledgehammer, they practically fell out. Turns out the king pins were very badly corroded in the area covered by the axle.