Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Play in the kingpins

Noticed some wheel wobble of late, visited a tyre fitter today to get the wheels re balanced and he noticed 'excessive play' in both front wheels. To be fair he showed me and it did look the case. He said best to get that sorted before bothering to re balance the wheels as it would almost certainly be the culprit. This chap owns and works on classics so he's not your local Kwik fit. Going to run it into my local dealer for full check next week, had a telephone conversation with them already - does this sound right, car is 2008 with 14,000 miles, passed MOT without any advisory in April, greasing done regularly but not the low figures some claim of 500 miles or so, I was told 1500 intervals were fine. any rate relatively the car is hardly used versus the tintop not very amused at the prospect of what I am told will be a very big bill if the worse is confirmed.

Seems quite early for me

Tuftie

I agree with John, this seems much too early for king pins.

I would get the front end up in the air and try to identify where the play is coming from.

I don't want to state the obvious but if you have wires , are you sure that they really are tight? If not give them a good knock with the mallet. This might just make a difference.

Next I would look at wheel bearings, check for radial play at the rim in both horizontal and vertical planes. If this is the case you will need to remove the split pin, remove the castleated nut, and tighten this up , then the game becomes trying to get the split pin to line up. with the drillings in the stub axle, usually it involves filing the back of the nut.

Then I would really pump as much grease as you can into the front suspension with a high pressure gun, and then try to see if you have any radial play in the vertical plane. If you think you can detect excess play I would seek a second opinion from an experienced owner.

Mine have lasted just over 6000miles despite greasing
Sometimes I think so called garages "over ream " or in other words just Don't know what they are doing !
I shall be doing my own over winter when the car isn't used as much

Tuftie,
Sounds about right to me. I am the third owner of a 07 +4 with 14.5K miles and it's had advisories on this since it's second MOT (7K miles). The off side king pin is now pretty bad, so it's a job I'll do over the winter. Stainless steel king pins are not the best bearing material!!!
As others above have said you do need to check the other things first though.
Cheers
John

Tuftie, at my MOT, at the end of August, and at about 14000 miles, I had an advisory that my near side king pin had some movement. It would have been OK for a few more miles, however I took the opportunity to get Williams to fit new hard chrome King pins about 10 days ago.

The original 4 year old King pins had been regularly greased from new at least once a month, and they had gaiters on the bottom spring.

I would get someone in the driving seat and try it with the brakes on hard.

If the play disappears it is likely wheel bearings.

Jon the Chief

My 2008 4/4 was bought with 7000 miles on the clock. It had had one king pin replaced already.
I chose to replace both with hard chromed king pins soon after acquisition and wrapped the pins / springs in Chamoise leather gaiters held in place by cable ties to keep the grit and road grime out. I grease at approximately 500 mile intervals myself and KNOW THE JOB IS DONE. I have done another 37,000 miles since that time without any further trouble from the king pins.
I had a local engineering shop do the reaming, but I may invest in a reamimg tool and do the job myself next time. I believe the fit within the bronze bushes should be an easy push fit rather than a tight interference fit. Too tight and the steering takes too many miles to free up.

The above advice is all sound, with one exception, the correct procedure if you can't align your split pin to one of the stub axle drilling (one is vertical the other horizontal) is not to file the back of the nut but to shim behind the nut so that the inner race of the outer bearing is set at the correct end float. You can file away but that's hard work and unless you can file perfectly squarely you will get a faulty setting. The important thing is you follow those that are getting exceptional mileages from king pin replacement is to fit Hardchrome kingpins with spiral grooved phosphor bronze bushes. If you have stainless or mild steel OE pins then depending on year you may well need new top bolts and grease nipples as the threads on the Hardchrome pins are different from many of the pins the MMC fit. All parts are available from Peter at Mulberry Fabrications. It's not expensive if you shop around ;-).

Final thought just came to mind, 2011 you are close to a change point, you may need dome top kingpins. However, and is often the case with MMC, cars with adjustable camber lower fixings 'should' have dome top kingpins and a concave lower surface to the top lug. I have seen concave lug top plates with flat top kingpins and dome topped kingpins with flat upper lugs.......that's why I keep both in stock, so should your local dealer, best check with them though ;-).