Case 580K Kingpins

Hello,

I noticed that if I slightly lift the front wheels off the ground with the front bucket and then tilt the axle where a wheel taps the ground I can hear a clunk. The play appears to be in the kingpins or bushings. I do not see any play that would cause the tire to have negative camber, which is kind of what I would expect if the bushings were severely worn. This appears to be only be in a vertical plane or up/down motion.

It looks like the amount of play is maybe 1/8". I haven't measured it yet but was going to try to get a better idea of how much play it has by using a pry bar and a block of wood under the front tire and see how much the knuckle/swivel moved between the housing with no weight on the front axle.

I know that the kingpins and bushings have shims to set the clearance of them, but this seems like it might be a bit more than just a little bit of clearance. I'm curious if anyone is familiar with this and if it is normal or acceptable to have a small amount of vertical play in the front end, or if I need to start ordering new kingpins, bushings, or shims.

Thanks for the help.

Welcome to HEF, BackhoeOwner !
Is it two wheel drive or 4 wheel drive ?

Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah the drive type might be an important detail. Oops. It is a 4x4 model.


Edit:

One other thing I forgot to mention is that when I greased the king pins I put the bucket on the ground and lifted almost all of the weight off the font end. I figured maybe this would help with letting the grease get in there more easily. When I started pumping the grease into the lower pins just as a bit of grease squirted out of the knuckle I noticed the axle housing lift a tiny bit from the knuckle. This again looked like maybe 1/8 or less.

This machine is new to me but looks like it has had a pretty easy life. I'm not trying to restore it to factory new condition but I do want to get ahead of all maintenance needs and especially if there's something neglected that might cause additional damage if not addressed. If a little bit of play in the kingpins is normal that would be great but if that is indicative of the bearing chewing into the housing or something like that I want to head that off.

Changing the fluids, filters, and pumping fresh moly grease into every joint is on to-do list. The trunion/axle-pivot joint is not cooperating with me yet but I'm pretty sure with some penetrating oil, a better grease gun, and some persistence I'll be able to get it to take.

I noticed that the inner tie rod joints have significant play. I'm going to have to replace those right away. The outer tie rod ends don't have grease fittings or boots on them. The ball socket is exposed, but they're tight but they articulate smoothly and don't have any noticeable play in them. Is that normal to have the joint exposed like that? It seems like it would make sense to have rubber boots on there to keep the dirt out and grease in.

Buy a service manual unless you already have one. It will be the best money you will ever spend on your K.

I have one but I don't see anything in there that defines acceptable tolerances except for when rebuilding it and shims.

Plus, I was hopeful to get the input from people who may have experience with the machine and what they've seen as the machine wears, what to watch out for, or any tricks as it relates to the 4x4 kingpins and tie rods.

If it still has some of the plastic shims fitted to it - just pull one or two from the top AND also the bottom pins - that should tighten it up some.

Thanks that's the kind of trick I was hoping someone would share. Seems that would be easy to do without pulling apart the whole planetary and whatnot too.

Finally got the front axle pin / trunion to take grease! What a battle that was.

I had to take the zerk off, use a pick to swirl around in the cavity of the pin/grease passage and pull the old stuff out. Most of it was just old gray/black grease, but then I got to this really hard opaque waxy stuff. I think this particular fitting was neglected. I remove as much of that as I could then sprayed brake cleaner in there to try to dissolve whatever was in there. Then I filled the cavity with PB Blaster along with saturating the exterior of the pin and bushing areas to see if that would help. Put the zerk back on, then I got my grease gun and filled the flex line with the PB and pumped it in there. This grease gun is a 10k PSI unit and it took three tries over the course of 7 days, but finally I got it to blast out whatever old dried up grease was in there just today. I over greased the joint like crazy in hopes of blowing out the PB and whatever else was in there. The front axle swivels through its tilt/travel very nice and super smoothly.

The rest of the grease fittings on the under side all look really well placed and even the universal joints were easy to get to. I'm really happy with the sensible design Case took where pretty much everything I've touched on it so far for basic maintenance (new filters, engine oil, grease zerk placements, and thermostat replacement) are all easy to get to and service so far.

Thankfully you got the grease in there. Ive had to change those kingpins before and it was a royal PITA. I had to torch the old one in half as it was completely seized in the spindle.