Front Spindle That Took a Hard Hit

[Kenny Edmondson]

Sorting through parts the other day. This spindle must’ve taken a really hard hit at one time in its life… Other than being twisted, it held up well. I’m sure the vehicle was toed out.

[John kuehn]

A worn bushing and kingpin can cause that. A T chassis that wound up in its last days used as a trailer would have worn down front end parts and the spindles were the first to show wear and overuse.

[RajoRacer]

I have a similar spindle - NOS - factory defect !

[Allan]

I have seen a defective on here to Steve. Looked like a new one. Confining that much bend to the spindle with no distortion to the spindle arm hole or the axle of the spindle seems a long stretch.

Allan from down under

[Wayne Sheldon]

Like Allan, I have seen several photos of the odd defective spindles on here.
It has been said that Ford sold some defective parts that had been rejected from the assembly line. Whether that was a deliberate action, or some employee's bad judgement has never been determined as far as I know. In some cases, it was really a matter of fitting issues that the factory couldn't take the few minutes to make corrections, while a repair shop replacing a broken piece on a car could refit the relatively minor errors without gridlocking the production line.
I ran into that myself a few years ago when early narrow-nose crankcase pans were temporarily hard to find, and therefore very expensive. I had had a NOS nose casting on my shelf for several years, and when I found a 1914/'15 pan that some fool had removed from a chassis with a hacksaw, decided to use the NOS casting.
I carefully removed the cut casting from the pan, carefully drilling out the rivets, and heating it up to loosen the brazing. The rivet holes on the NOS casting fit the rivet holes in the pan perfectly. I bolted the pieces together, then one by one removed one bolt and replaced it with a new steel rivet. Everything was looking so nice, I went ahead and brazed the pieces just as the factory had done. It looked great!
Then, I put the hand crank in it.

Rats.

The nice clean new front piece, no hundred years of use, fit the hand crank so nicely. But it had been mis-drilled. Not by much, couldn't see it, until the crank handle was put in. However, the hole for the crank handle being more than four inches away from where the crankshaft passes through its way, the crank handle completely missed where the crankshaft would come out. It might have worked as it was, the crankshaft would have shortened the distance by about half. But it wasn't good enough for me. I didn't want to take that chance later when the engine was completely done.
So I rigged up a steel rod for leverage to another chunk of channel steel with a "puller". I applied a bit of pressure, then heated the end of the NOS casting (hoping based upon brazing that it was a good cast steel?). Then added a bit more pull, more heat, more pull, more heat again, until the rod told me it was properly lined up.
It didn't take much, I took it slow and easy. the tweak is hardly noticeable, and fit into the front engine mount just fine.

That is my "NOS parts doesn't mean they are perfect" story"!

As for the OP spindle? It looks to me like it has been twisted and bent somehow. And by a lot more force than I used to straighten my nose piece.

[Adam]

Wayne; That part actually was probably made to a good standard and your pan versus the new part had enough discrepancy to be mis-aligned. In the factory, the rough nose piece and tail piece were assembled to the pan in a die, brazed and then the entire pan was put in a lathe type machine and the nose & tail were machined to center with the pans center line.

The “replacement” nose piece that was available for repair work was meant to be “hammer adjusted” on a pan fixture during/after assembly to pan.