Just wondering why no one has made dropped spindles for our straight axles.... Any guess's?? On another note, I saw where someone had taken dropped spindles from an independent front susp. and adapted them to the straight axle!! They had what looked like some sort of spacer on top of the axle along with a longer king pin. Comments etc welcome.
Robert
Dropped spindles
Re: Dropped spindles
My guess would be the market is not big enough for the engineering investment.
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- Posts: 53
- Joined: October 15, 2014, 7:14 pm
- Location: Frederick, MD
Re: Dropped spindles
AGREED! I upgraded my front drums to disks on my twin I beam 66. The disk brake spindles were from a 72 F100. Would have been great to install drop spindles during the upgrade! Spindles would definitely be cheaper than the drop I beams on my truck.
- slixtyfive
- Posts: 443
- Joined: January 19, 2007, 2:03 pm
- Location: Eastern Iowa
Re: Dropped spindles
My $0.02
Not to say that they couldn't be designed and built but I think there would be some potential inherent issues with 'dropped' spindles for most King pin type spindle applications. The typical king pin spindle design has a bushing at the top, a bushing at the bottom and the spindle 'snout' somewhere in between (most likely at or near centered). If you raise the snout to achieve the 'dropped' effect, it will no longer be located between the bushings but instead is above both bushings which will change the loading on the bushings and may cause severe wear. Also, the top portion of the dropped spindle(above the top bushing) will need to be designed to account for the cantilevered effect it is now positioned in which could require a thicker structure etc and thus impact track width etc.
Again - just my thoughts on the subject.......
Not to say that they couldn't be designed and built but I think there would be some potential inherent issues with 'dropped' spindles for most King pin type spindle applications. The typical king pin spindle design has a bushing at the top, a bushing at the bottom and the spindle 'snout' somewhere in between (most likely at or near centered). If you raise the snout to achieve the 'dropped' effect, it will no longer be located between the bushings but instead is above both bushings which will change the loading on the bushings and may cause severe wear. Also, the top portion of the dropped spindle(above the top bushing) will need to be designed to account for the cantilevered effect it is now positioned in which could require a thicker structure etc and thus impact track width etc.
Again - just my thoughts on the subject.......
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