TheSamba.com :: View topic - New kingpin seals have snapped and fallen off

Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:28 am

Shiney rebuilt kingpins installed I noticed unfortunately that a few of the sealing rings on the king pins and link pins have snapped and fallen off and they are only a few weeks old :(

I've not had this before so I assume the current batch of seals going around are poor quality.

I suppose I can get more easy enough, but I can't get the king pin ones on without splitting the kingpins! any ideas ? does anyone make split seals which you can install without removing/dismantling the kingpins ?

Old kingpin photo for reference, it;s the rubber seals you see between the various components of the kingpin

Lee

Wed Jul 11, 2012 6:29 am

I had my spindles rebuilt by a highly competent buddy last year. I was greasing the front this past week and noticed two of the seals have gone missing.
These are about a year old, but don't have many miles on them. Pretty sure they were WW supplied
I agree that they should last a lot longer than that.

Anyone else?

Wed Jul 11, 2012 6:35 am

X3 !!! My beam hasn't even been outside and the spindles already need to be torn apart due to seals splitting. Fuckin junk.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 6:42 am

So now we need a solution that doesn't involve splitting the kingpins, or even removing them!

Lee

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:03 am

That sucks.
I'd say with regular greasing, they would be fine, though.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:42 am

Culito wrote: That sucks.
I'd say with regular greasing, they would be fine, though.

This has nothing to do with greasing I think as they are failing before vans have hit the road. One of mine failed very quickly (and there was plenty of grease)

Lee

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:47 am

I think the PETROLEUM product IS the problem. I think it is softening/deteriorating the rubber. Anyhow that is what I believe.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:53 am

Could you cut a new one, slip it in place and put a hose clamp around the whole thing to keep it in place? Or better yet one of those CV boot band clamps that don't have the screw on them to get in the way.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:59 am

lee griffiths wrote: Culito wrote: That sucks.
I'd say with regular greasing, they would be fine, though.

This has nothing to do with greasing I think as they are failing before vans have hit the road. One of mine failed very quickly (and there was plenty of grease)

Lee
By "they", I meant the king pins.
Regular greasing would purge any debris that the missing seals might let in.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:28 am

Only thing I can think of off hand is splitting a seal and holding it in place with a black zip tie.
Not ideal, but not stupid fugly and reasonably functional.

Other ideas?

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:32 am

Culito wrote: lee griffiths wrote: Culito wrote: That sucks.
I'd say with regular greasing, they would be fine, though.

This has nothing to do with greasing I think as they are failing before vans have hit the road. One of mine failed very quickly (and there was plenty of grease)

Lee
By "they", I meant the king pins.
Regular greasing would purge any debris that the missing seals might let in.

Sorry I get you now. Yes the seals are not really seals but just cover the gaps so greasing would keep them cleaner. I figure the split seal and band clip approach might be the only solution without dismantling the kingpin.

Lee

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:32 am

Riff Raff wrote: Only thing I can think of off hand is splitting a seal and holding it in place with a black zip tie.
Not ideal, but not stupid fugly and reasonably functional.

Other ideas?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Better than nothing.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:39 am

To back up Keith's post. Yes, they are/were WW seals used on his rebuild. I'm now convinced that high quality O-rings are the way to go when building spindles. The set I built for my SC, at the same time as Keith's, have already split...sitting in the garage, on a beam that has never been installed. I have a bulk order of WW seals sitting under the press for future spindle builds. I guess I'll just throw them away.

The only way to re-seal them is to split them.

Chris

Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:46 am

Is WW aware of this? They seem to be pretty good about stepping up and doing the right thing.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 11:16 am

I got the feel that these seals were a little too small and thus stretched when installed. Rubber doesn't really like this.

One of the urethane suppliers could have these made up easily and they'd last forever.

Remember the superglue ads in the '80s with the guy sitting on a rubber band after he cut it and glued it back together with superglue - maybe it wasn't in the US but the suggestion was that you could glue a rubber join permanently.

Come to think of it all the windows seals are joined - what do they use ?

Lee

ps, whilst looking for the superglue advert I found this and laughed a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHX-4cKEQH4

Wed Jul 11, 2012 11:52 am

had Aaron from ohio do mine last August. The same for me, they split after only about 2 weeks. I reused original VW . 45 years old these seals are. Why are the others from WW turning to crap so quickly? I hate SHITE quality parts!!!!

Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:27 pm

llovette wrote: Why are the others from WW turning to crap so quickly?
I think we all know the reason for this. The parts are getting manufactured by companies that know nothing about the final application for the part.
They have a contract to supply 10,000 "rubber" seals at specific dimensions for, say, 7 cents each.
That is what they supply.
There is no materials engineering or design done to ensure the product is fit for purpose and no QC/QA done to ensure it meets those original specs.
When VW chose a supplier to provide these 60 years ago, there were all those value added ingredients built into the product that are not present today.

The companies themselves are complicit (for manufacturing crap), WW is complicit (for not providing spec's and not testing the product to ensure it meets requirements), and all of us are complicit as well (for refusing to pay for engineering, QA and QC).
Before everybody jumps up and says they are willing to pay for quality, know that most of the rest of the population is not. If there were a better market for good quality, expensive parts, there would be more companies specializing in that. The reality is that everybody wants good quality cheap parts, but cheap wins out if the choice needs to be made.
All you have to do is look at the number of distributors selling cheap Chinese crap, and that tells you everything you need to know about the purchasing habits of the North American consumer.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:54 pm

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5070904&highlight=kingpin+seal#5070904

Intersesting read

Wed Jul 11, 2012 2:30 pm

llovette wrote: had Aaron from ohio do mine last August. The same for me, they split after only about 2 weeks. I reused original VW . 45 years old these seals are.

Just to clarify... STOCK rebuild and those were the "stock" style seals for the link pins NOT the king pin seals, correct?

I've been using the o-ring type seal since I started doing spindles. I have not personally had a failure or been notified about any customers having a king pin seal fail.

Thanks.

Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:12 pm

You guys made me curious so I went and checked mine..

They are all cracked, one is split..

Beam has only been on the double cab for a year or so..

Bought them from WW when the beam was disassembled..