It Rolls!

After two and a half years, there are four wheels on the ground again. The front suspension is installed, along with the wheel portion of the disk brake conversion kit. I couldn’t mount the calipers yet as there isn’t enough room inside the 14” roll-around wheels. The 15” Cordoba wheels will cure that, and since it will be a while before brake lines will be installed, there is no reason to mount calipers and expose them to the weather.

 

I had a couple of issues while installing the AAJ brake kit, but nothing that wasn’t easily resolved, and it wasn’t a fault of the kit. The first was very minor as there was an interference fit between the adapter and the spindle casting on the right side that was cured by grinding a small notch in the adapter.

The left side had a different problem as the spacing of the holes to mount the adapters and the steering arm was slightly off from the spindle holes. It was only .02”, but because of the close tolerance, I had to slightly oval the bracket holes to get the bolts in. Although they appear to be original, the spindle castings have several minor but measureable differences, including that hole spacing. Different Chrysler suppliers is my guess.

 

Another minor issue that might be applicable to others installing this kit was the fit of the main castle nut. After tightening, and backing off enough to free the wheel to spin easily, the cotter pin couldn’t be installed. Deepening the notch in the nut by a few thousandths fixed that. So far, the brake kit parts seem to be high quality, precision made and even the smallest parts have been supplied.

I wish I could say something similar about the Kanter supplied, Chinese sourced, front end kit, but it’s a real disappointment. Besides the problems identified in a post several weeks ago, even more surfaced today. The most irritating problem was the threaded bushing dimensional tolerance. The outer threads were not cut accurately and the bushings would bind while being installed in the spindles and control arms, so once again I had to use some of the old bushings in order to make everything work.

The grease seals are cheaply designed; with some being nothing more than glorified garden hose gaskets. They fit loosely and don’t cover the open areas, leaving gaps where dirt can penetrate down into the threads. They will probably be adequate for a fair weather car, but if the kit was to be installed on a daily driver, parts wouldn’t last very long once exposed to a steady diet of dust, water and mud.

The holes for the grease zerks were also not tapped properly and several had to be re-threaded. If it hadn’t been for the hardened grease in the old front end parts, I believe I would have been better off buying only a king pin kit and tie rod ends, but boiling out and using all the old parts along with new zerks and seals. It would have been much cheaper and the quality probably as good. I wonder if American consumers will ever get tired enough of crappy Chinese goods to stage a buyer’s revolt? I know that after I install the last pieces of this Kanter kit, they will be on the receiving end of a very nasty letter.

One final comment on the front end and brake install. Yes, with moderate mechanical skills, a novice can do all the tasks required to rebuild and/or install the parts, but would be hard pressed to do it all without a shop full of professional grade tools. If you don’t have access to the right tools and you had to buy everything required to do the job, you would be much smarter financially to forego ordering tools of unknown quality and save the money to have your local machinist to do the hard parts. That said, the spindle holes that I had the machine shop tap were done with a tap that did a rather poor job of cutting and the bolts would start to bind before going more than three or four threads deep. Fortunately, the tap I had previously ordered finished the job just fine.