I'm just about to do the kingpins on my 77 plus 8 and am going to have a go at the bushes/reaming myself this time. Last time I got a local engineering shop to do the reaming. I'm slightly curious about the reaming process though. Not the mechanics of doing the reaming, but managing the tolerances. I have the hardened chrome kingpins which are exactly 1 inch dia as far as I can tell. And I have a fixed 1-inch reamer. Once you have reamed the new bushes in situ - how much tolerance is needed? I would have thought that the bush's inner diameters needed to be reamed to a very small amount larger than the outer diameter of the kingpins. Maybe a thou or two? To allow a good sliding contact. Last time, the local engineering shop did it in such a way that you put a very lightly lubricated kingpin in the stub axle and held the axle so the kingpin was vertical, the kingpin slid very slowly through the bushes (under gravity) - at maybe a cm or two a second. But if the kingpin and the reamer are both exactly one inch, will there be that slight tolerance to allow a sliding fit? Any help much appreciated.
