Update by Tim Suddard to the
Mercedes-Benz 230 S project car
Mar 26, 2014
We took on the rather arduous task of replacing our worn out, rusty king pins and ball joints.
The alignment bolt snapped; notice the cam-style bolt that allows dialing camber in and out.
The king pin-style front end is grueling to fix, once everything gets rusty and worn out. The new king pin and bushings are ready to go back into the now cleaned and prepared spindle.
When we first rushed this 230 S project together, we did a quick brake job and left the seemingly adequate front end alone.
As we were getting ready for our big trip last year, we checked the front-end alignment and were horrified to find a frozen alignment bolt. Upon attempting to free it, it broke off. We were able to replace it but had no time to fix the underlying problem: worn out upper ball joints, frozen solid with rust.
As usual, we decided the only right way to do this was to pull apart the entire front end and order all new king pins and bushings from Mercedes-Benz Classic. Expensive? Yes. Worth it to have factory parts and do the job only once? Also, yes.
The job is quite straight forward, other than having to drill, heat and tap out the rusty, old king pins and ball joints. Once completed, we painted the front end with Eastwood Chassis Black and assembled per the shop manual.
From there we went back to our alignment man, Geoff Thompson, who had no trouble dialing in a slight bit of negative camber, zero toe and a few degrees of positive caster.
Germans with American fins? In your mailbox six times a year. Subscribe now.
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