If you've done the 3/4 ton steering mod, please read.

[fishsticks]

The friends who bought my TB went to change a worn out TRE today and found this:



These were drilled with a properly tapered reamer and were a nice tight fit when they were installed. Unsure of what caused this.

Please check yours if you haven't recently. There are hardened inserts available to fix this if you have the same problem.

[Moots1288]

I have ordered the Ruff stuff inserts cause my taper on stock knuckles were to large.

[HARDTRAILZ]

Thanks for posting this. Hope no one else has this.

[fishsticks]

I did some more thinking on possible causes tonight. I wonder if drilling out the knuckles made it past whatever hardening process was used on them.

[HARDTRAILZ]

That is logical.

[ErikSS]

I've only had mine on for about a year. (15,000 miles among 2 sets of TREs) They seem fine though. I didn't have to drill my spindles. Hopefully your theory is right about the hardening and I wont have that problem. Thank you for bringing it too our attention.

[v7guy]

I'll try to take a gander at my knuckles when I go out to the garage this afternoon and see if I notice any funny business.

[Trail X]

Looks like it wasn't tightened down enough.

Do you have a shot from below? I'm curious what happened to the taper. You're only showing the threaded side, right?

[KingBird]

I think fishsticks is on to something. Are the knuckles only surfaced hardened? The trigger and sear on AR-15/10/M-16/M-4s are only surfaced hardened, you can polish to get a sweet trigger pull but you're going to wear them out in a few thousand rounds.

[The Roadie]

If the tie rod end is tight in the taper, there's no movement to wear metal away. Was the nut loose? Bottoming out on the threads?

[Trail X]

I'll go out on a limb and say that I don't think the knuckles are heat treated at all.

[The Roadie]

That's a good point, especially if they're easy to drill and ream.

[fishsticks]

I only have this one picture to go off of. I haven't been over to look at the personally yet.

[bartonmd]

Donny, didn't you taper them the opposite way, originally, then taper them OEM direction? I seem to remember seeing a picture where you had them on the top side of the knuckle to get a better angle and I was like "dude, that'll give you wicked bump steer" and it did, then you reamed them the other direction, so you only had 1/2 of the taper?

Mike

[fishsticks]

Donny, didn't you taper them the opposite way, originally, then taper them OEM direction? I seem to remember seeing a picture where you had them on the top side of the knuckle to get a better angle and I was like "dude, that'll give you wicked bump steer" and it did, then you reamed them the other direction, so you only had 1/2 of the taper?

Mike

I remember that too. I'm trying to remember what I did with that whole situation...

[bartonmd]

Donny, didn't you taper them the opposite way, originally, then taper them OEM direction? I seem to remember seeing a picture where you had them on the top side of the knuckle to get a better angle and I was like "dude, that'll give you wicked bump steer" and it did, then you reamed them the other direction, so you only had 1/2 of the taper?

Mike

I remember that too. I'm trying to remember what I did with that whole situation...

I remember saying something about how you only had half the taper from reaming from both directions and you saying that it would be fine.

Mike

[HARDTRAILZ]

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2510&hilit=steering

Mike was right. (No surprise there).

With the tie rod on top, unloading the suspension causes enough of a shift in toe to make driving the truck VERY interesting over bumps.

Fortunately, there's enough meat in the knuckle that I can taper the bottom as well. I'll shift them to the bottoms until I can get the "other" project done then flip em over again.

[The Roadie]

"...it'll be fine..."

"that'll buff right out..."

"...Hey, hold my beer and lookit this!..."

[fishsticks]

I remember all that, but I think I bought another knuckle for that side later on though. Of course I've thrown all my old shit into scrap so no way to tell now. I swear when I got rear ended late last year I lost a few GB of memory. My buddy says it was like the pic on both sides, and I know for a fact I only tapered the top of one.

If I can get over there this weekend I'll have a look for myself.