On the morning of Saturday, January 25, four of us met Bill Davidson at the SAIT automotive center to work on our front axles.
Those present were myself, Gord Cantley, Dean Potter and Walter Pickles. Walter made a very early departure from his farm near Castor and he even found time to rescue a stranded family in the ditch along the way. It was a very cold day, which made it a good day to be working on Model A stuff, especially in a huge warm shop. We even got to park our vehicles inside.
For those who don't know Bill, he has been a member of the club right from the start, and his technical knowledge of Model A's (not to mention all vehicles) is superior. He has offered to do several of these axle sessions in the past, for which we can all be grateful. The intention of this session was to straighten the axles and fit the kingpins into the axles, as well as fit the bushings in the spindles.
My own axle, from my sport coupe “Henry” proved to be by far the most challenging. It appears to have “hit the ditch” at some time in the distant past (at least, not while I've owned it). One end was bent, as well as being twisted. It took Bill about 2 ½ hours to straighten. He used a 17-½ ton press. He also used his home made measuring jig for checking the kingpin angles and parallelism. All the other axles brought in were very straight, and only needed peening of the kingpin eyes. This involved heating the eyes, then hitting from the outside with a hammer and steel block to shrink the holes. A reamer was used in the holes to get a snug fit.
Next, we installed the kingpin bushings into the spindles and went to the new automotive building to ream them out. It sure goes nice when you have access to the proper equipment. That completed our session, after about 5 ½ hours.
Thank you to Bill Davidson for all your help and to SAIT for the use of its facilities.
You might want to note that none of us were able to buy new kingpins. Fortunately, my old ones were still in good shape. It seems that repo's are no longer available, so if you find a good set at a swap meet, buy them.
Gary Callander
