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The lower trunnions on the front suspension wear out easily. We found a steering pin kit that included lower trunnions at auction, and decided to rebuild the front suspension, as steering was very bad. Now, it turns out that the right side was tragically bad, but we started with the left side. One note here. On ours, somebody welded the lower trunnion to the control arm. Now, we have had advice to "stake" the lower trunnion in place by using a punch to indent the opening on the control arm that fits around the lower trunnion. Our kit, though, American Motors part number 3207017, has a different kind of lower trunnion that was installed. There is a nut on the bottom that holds the trunnion in place. We are guessing, but we believe that this replacement kit was a better design, and less prone to failure. There is some very bad damage to the right suspension. The plate is cracked that mounts to the frame rail, and the rail itself is cracked in several places and bent. We also found some bad rust on the rail on the left immediately forward of the suspension plate. The point is that we never fully installed the new steering pin. We are saving this beautiful suspension part until we know what we are going to do about the damaged frame. To work on the suspension, you need to remove the wheel and outer cone. It is a Timken lm11949:
The spindle with the hub removed:
Remove the spindle:
The new pin, next to a new upper trunnion. You can see the bearing on the new pin. It has ball bearings inside. We cleaned it up, greased it, and it seems fine:
Here is the steering pin with the upper trunnion installed:
Here are the old and new steering pins side-by-side. Notice that the new pin has an extra threaded piece on the bottom for the nut to go.
The instruction sheet for installing the double seal steering knuckle pin and trunnion assembly is here:
page 1 - page 2
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