grease fittings

[steve welte]

Richard you should not need a shim washer. That tells me you have not crushed the hanger to the spindle barrel. Anytime there is clearance between the hanger and barrel there is slop or there will soon be. Remember I said to tighten them until you have some drag. They will quickly free upon running. It is not uncommon for me to tighten the kingpin bolts 2 or 3 times a season if I'm running a lot of laps with the same kart. Today we don't run them like in the day when you raced weekly or a couple times a week. A perfect example to the problem is not all hangers have the same distance between flanges and not all spindle barrels are the same length and god forbid anything being the same on a used worn kart. Now if you were to shorten the barrel like is done on many karts so you can add washers top or bottom or both to adjust wheel load you would still crush the hanger to the barrel and washers for slight drag initially.

[Tom Smith]

Probably the best crafted kart I've ever seen is a home made rear engine vintage kart someone gave me awhile back, looks like it was built at Lockheed, anyway it doesn't have cheap s*** spindle bushes like some of the somewhat better vintage karts did, this one has Nadella combination needle roller bearings for both the axial and radial thrust spindle loads. I haven't driven it yet but I have driven my Max-Torque karts with bushed everything and they do drive and steer better than any thing else I've driven which is quite a few different karts. The other exceptional good steering kart is my Bonanza Rattlesnake. The two worst steering karts are my Margays.

[Terry Bentley]

My one attempt at correcting some bad front end wear is taking needle bearings from a Mc piston and press into the spindle that originally was for 5/8 bolt. I had to ream it out to fit bearing, but no big deal. Then used some nice ground and hardened step bolts. Also used thrust washers/needle bearings at top and bottom. This way I could tighten down the bolt until there was no play at all without any binding.

I cut a stepped spacer to reduce down the C channel to fit smaller bolt. It was also was machined with recess to act as a shield for needle bearing too. There was just enough clearance to place an oring under thrust washer to seal out the elements. I put more work in to this than was really necessary, but fun to do at the time.

It was a remarkable improvement over the original stuff. I would not hesitate to do something like this again on certain old karts. Some need it badly others not so much.

[Richard Stamile]

Richard you should not need a shim washer. That tells me you have not crushed the hanger to the spindle barrel. Anytime there is clearance between the hanger and barrel there is slop or there will soon be. Remember I said to tighten them until you have some drag. They will quickly free upon running. It is not uncommon for me to tighten the kingpin bolts 2 or 3 times a season if I'm running a lot of laps with the same kart. Today we don't run them like in the day when you raced weekly or a couple times a week. A perfect example to the problem is not all hangers have the same distance between flanges and not all spindle barrels are the same length and god forbid anything being the same on a used worn kart. Now if you were to shorten the barrel like is done on many karts so you can add washers top or bottom or both to adjust wheel load you would still crush the hanger to the barrel and washers for slight drag initially.

Ok i will take i t out thanks Steve

[Terry Bentley]

Make sure the C of spindle is square first. If there is clearance now, add a thin washer to make up the gap. Then you can tighten the bolt until a little bit of drag.

[steve welte]

back in the day my blackhawk kart had nylon inserts for bushings with a nylon washer type end. I'v taken several of these apart years later with no wear. I never had any wear the 5 years I raced a Hawk back in the '70's. Bronze bushings I've tried but they wear easily. Needle bearings need an extremely hard surface and since they don't turn very far if the surface is not hard enough they will pocket out as the rotate only in the same small area. The exception would be the radial type on the top with a hardened thrust washer on the top and bottom of the bearing. Of course If you don't run your kart a lot you may never discover all this. I've tried all these over the years. At the end of the day everyone wants to complicate a simple go kart. Drive hard-go fast-have fun!

[Richard Stamile]

Has any one tried the kingpin bolt center drilled with a very small hole either from the top or bottom of the bolt at the beginning
of the hole opened wider and threaded for a grease fitting then a hole drill across to feed the kingpin and collar, if grease holds grit from sand and causes wear
it would not be as bad if you pushed the dirty grease out and feeding with fresh clean grease , of course there if the issue of will your kingpin bolt being
not as strong not saying i am going to try this just thoughts of others or maybe some have tried this already

[ted johnson]

Richard, it's been done many times. It works O.K. I still maintain it's overkill. I don't think I'd try it with a kingpin bolt smaller than 1/2". You can get Zerk fittings with either a No. 10-32 or 1/4-28 thread, so the tap drill isn't all that big in either case. Ted

[Richard Stamile]

i guess that it had been done, i have even seen them available to buy ready made if its overkill then ill pass i still have enough to do
before this is ready to go

[ted johnson]

Tap drilling certainly wouldn't weaken the bolt enough to worry about. I just think it's time that could be spent doing something more useful. Anyhow, the Blitz will make a very nice rig when it's complete. Ted