*Check your spindle gussets for cracks with B/S talk

1MK · Feb 9, 2017

What's crazy is since seeing these two spindle failures, I would have never gave a second thought to them being an issue. Especially with them gusseted.

MonkeyProof · Feb 9, 2017

1MK said: ↑

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And another one bites the dust, at least you caught it before a potential total failure happened. I would imagine that is fixable with a bigger bead and with the addition of an added gusset as mentioned before, which I think how I'll deal with mine.

1MK · Feb 9, 2017

MonkeyProof[OP] said: ↑

And another one bites the dust, at least you caught it before a potential total failure happened. I would imagine that is fixable with a bigger bead and with the addition of an added gusset as mentioned before, which I think how I'll deal with mine.
Click to expand...

I'm going to pull it apart tomorrow and give it a better look. What I can see right now is that it doesn't wrap all the way around to the upright portion, and if I can confirm that I'm just going to fix it. Take a carbide bit and grind out the crack, re-weld, then gusset it into the steering arm.

glorifiedwelder · Feb 9, 2017

You may also want to drill a hole where the crack stops to help prevent it from continuing even after it's welded

jgantzler · Feb 9, 2017

glorifiedwelder said: ↑

You may also want to drill a hole where the crack stops to help prevent it from continuing even after it's welded
Click to expand...

Solid advice here. If you can drill the end of the crack, it will definitely stop it from becoming an issue.

Mudman · Feb 10, 2017

Very interesting read so far, I am intrigued. While my truck is pretty much bone stock- learning about this is fun.

I'm no expert on anything, but the behavior of the cracking seems similar to cast rather than forged. I'm not saying it's one or the other, because I genuinely don't know. But the time I was reading this thread, I keep thinking "cast".

Very curious to see what other details surface. Keep it up guys, we got some damn detectives here!

98tacoma27 · Feb 10, 2017

Mach375 said: ↑

I'm sure glad we have people able to positively ID a forged part versus a cast part using nothing more than an Internet picture.

Tell me, do cast parts have the same kind of strength needed to take the kind of use and abuse these spindles take?

Please, argue the point more. Tell us more how you're the only one on here convinced it's cast, in the face of everyone, including common sense, telling you otherwise.
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I didn't positively identify anything; I just said I wasn't convinced it's forged. I never said I was convinced it's cast; although I do see my posts might reflect that. And common sense tells me to trust but verify. That's all I'm doing. Aren't we here to share ideas and learn? I'm just thinking out loud and trying to catch up with the rest of the pack.

zippsub9 · Feb 10, 2017

Sub'd for all the great information being spread around with the exception of a few assclowns. I wasn't seeing their comments then I realized they were already blocked from previous jackassery. Any who, can anyone post pics of the drilling to alleviate further metal fatigue and rewelding process? I am trying to visualize the drilling location and understand this part but have never seen this technique before. Thanks.

Texoma · Feb 10, 2017

jberry813 said: ↑

Truck Shop spindle gussets!

Click to expand...

How do I aquire these?

Mach375 · Feb 10, 2017

Call the Truck Shop in San Diego. Like, actual phone call.
They're a local outfit, and tend to deal locally. In this case, they do the work on customer parts (I did specifically ask).

Texoma · Feb 10, 2017

Mach375 said: ↑

Call the Truck Shop in San Diego. Like, actual phone call.
They're a local outfit, and tend to deal locally. In this case, they do the work on customer parts (I did specifically ask).
Click to expand...

I'll have to give em a call then. Maybe they wouldn't mind shipping the gussets. If they refuse, then I suppose next best would be TC with sway bar. Unless anyone can suggest otherwise.

Mach375 · Feb 10, 2017

zippsub9 said: ↑

Sub'd for all the great information being spread around with the exception of a few assclowns. I wasn't seeing their comments then I realized they were already blocked from previous jackassery. Any who, can anyone post pics of the drilling to alleviate further metal fatigue and rewelding process? I am trying to visualize the drilling location and understand this part but have never seen this technique before. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Common technique to stop crack travel. Just a small hole at the tip of the crack. The idea is to, if you'll pardon the phrase, "build a wall" in front of it. You want the crack to have to completely start over, which is more difficult when encountering a perpendicular surface (the wall of the far side of the drilled hole) than it is to continue uninterrupted down the same path.
Make sure the hole encompasses the end of the crack. Don't drill just beyond (crack still has to travel to get to a stopping point), and don't drill short (crack will continue on anyway).

Texoma · Feb 10, 2017

When I googled " The Truck Stop San Diego" this is what came up.
http://thewoodgroupsd.com/venues/truckstop/

Mach375 · Feb 10, 2017

Texoma said: ↑

I'll have to give em a call then. Maybe they wouldn't mind shipping the gussets. If they refuse, then I suppose next best would be TC with sway bar. Unless anyone can suggest otherwise.
Click to expand...

You could always ask a San Diego TW member to relieve them in the mail, walk them down, then ship them back.

Mach375 · Feb 10, 2017

http://sdtruckshop.com/

Texoma · Feb 10, 2017

Mach375 said: ↑

http://sdtruckshop.com/
Click to expand...

Got it, thank you.

Wishbone Runner · Feb 10, 2017

MonkeyProof[OP] said: ↑

And another one bites the dust, at least you caught it before a potential total failure happened. I would imagine that is fixable with a bigger bead and with the addition of an added gusset as mentioned before, which I think how I'll deal with mine.
Click to expand...

1MK said: ↑

I'm going to pull it apart tomorrow and give it a better look. What I can see right now is that it doesn't wrap all the way around to the upright portion, and if I can confirm that I'm just going to fix it. Take a carbide bit and grind out the crack, re-weld, then gusset it into the steering arm.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I did this to mine, and they just cracked again. I did not add another gusset to the steering arm though, just ground them out and re-welded.

Wasatch · Feb 10, 2017

Hi all,

Check out this resource for some good insight on spindle gussets:

MojaveMadman · Feb 10, 2017

Wasatch said: ↑

Hi all,

Check out this resource for some good insight on spindle gussets:
Click to expand...

Ok so I just read this post. It is long but I feel like this individual is making some very reasonable points. Mainly about suspension binding and what causes a spindle to bend or get damaged in the first place. I know not all will agree but this is a good post!!! It covers a few additional subjects but these are things I think anyone doing suspension modification NEED to understand.

For those that are lazy (like me a lot of the time) here is the text from user devinsixtyseven on TTORA:

devinsixtyseven said: ↑

The following information is from a couple desert shops and various forums, as well as my own experience. For further welding reference, I would specifically ask at the Millerwelds forums.

I would not do this modification, but I'll explain why after explaining how, cuz I suspect most people will do it anyway.

The spindles, knuckles, and other major parts are claimed to be forged and heat treated steel, by a number of fabrication shops which I would be willing to trust. I can try to get ahold of them and verify this, and post which shops said what. ER70S6 solid wire and a hot 220v welder will do the job.

When welding thin (1/8" gussets) to thick (1" diameter spindles), turn the heat up and wick the thin in to the puddle on the thick. This is how it is done, there are no exceptions to be made for 4WD use, vehicles, homebrew, or "it'll work" excuses. Turn up the heat, and burn the thick stuff...the thin stuff will bond. If you don't know how to do this, have someone do it for you. If you think garage work on a 4WD means an exception to this rule, I suggest asking the experts at Millerwelds, or the experts (not the hacks) at Pirate 4x4, or the experts at OFN (some of them are the same people on all three forums). If you're gonna do it, do it right. The recommendation I received for welding to the forged knuckles (my truck has a steering knuckle w/ball joint included and a separate spindle, later models IIRC are a spindle & knuckle unit which bolts to a separate lower ball joint) was to preheat, crank the welder up all the way, and burn the beads as I normally would. The area around the tie rod hole was also welded, and I did not find any cracking in the four or five months of daily driving and wheeling in winter and summer months (Feb-July) after the modification. It does seem to be strong enough, and it does seem to take to welding, even my beginner welding.

For a long section like the gussets, and on as important a part as a spindle, the welds need to be stitched and each stitch allowed to cool (not cold, just not immediate post-welding hot..remember I was told to preheat my knuckles with a heat gun) before continuing. The entire process, on my truck (done by Mike at ORS), took about a day IIRC because two stitches (one each side) could be done before having to walk away and come back later for another stitch. Each stitch will be 1-1/2" to 2" long, and the recommended process is to weld in a pattern, similar to how you tighten head, header, and manifold bolts...jump around.

Stress and strain are introduced when parts don't fit. The weld will bring parts together, if they didn't fit properly...not a feature you want in a spindle, but avoidable. Fit-up is absolutely critical...if you need to move the gusset around for a good fit, bend it, grind, whatever, do it. In particular, you don't want the gusset pulling down or pushing up on the ring at the top of the spindle (on your trucks, IIRC it holds the stud, and the upper joint is in the upper arm...stronger than mine, which is the other way around).

Obviously, be careful with heat around any part which accepts another part in a press or precise slip fit--bearings and studs--and be sure to keep spatter off these same parts. Cardboard, masking tape and shop towels suffice.

Now...why not? I thought I needed these, decided to get them, had them installed, and now wish I hadn't.

First, a brief history of spindle gussets. AFAIK, the first Toyota mass-market gussets were produced by Total Chaos, in response to bent and broken spindles in trucks which were put through extreme desert use...ie jumped a lot. If you look around, you'll find that the trucks which broke or bent spindles (or related parts) came in three categories...racing/extreme use (none of what we do is extreme), racing accidents, and improperly limited suspension movement.

In the first category, I have seen one picture, relatively recently, of a spindle which had completely broken off near the hub ring. It was a race truck, and these gussets would not likely have prevented the failure. This was a BIG break. I have also talked to the guys at Arctic Trucks about spindle strength, and they explained that they bent a couple spindles during the Top Gear/North Pole challenge, running 38x15 studded tires on trucks which were constantly being pushed, including jumped (video on YouTube, pictures on the AT website).

The second, I have heard of one bent spindle...granted this was on a 2nd-gen Tundra, but it took hitting a utility pole at race speed to bend the spindle.

All the rest, and the vast majority of what I've seen, heard, and read about has been a result of binding the upper ball joint, which results in spindle damage directly related to the violence of the bind. Many, if not all, of these trucks were using a particular manufacturer's kit or a kit with a similar problem (guys that ran a bump off the top of the spindle don't count). The damage was always the same, the ring around the upper ball joint (1st-gen, remember) would shatter, being the smallest, weakest part of the spindle...also it is the part forced to withstand a bending and axial load applied by the spring or weight of the truck at the lower ball joint, around the cup for the upper ball joint.

You cannot transmit torque through a ball joint until it binds. The original stock joints were clocked in such a way that there was more compression travel available than droop. The first aftermarket arms aimed to clock the stud around where more droop was available, using the remaining compression misalignment. The original aftermarket uniball joints used off-the-shelf parts, namely a 1" bore uniball and 1"-to-3/4" high-misalignment adapter, and were clocked to leverage the misalignment of the uniball during droop travel. Unfortunately, the same company clocked their uniballs to around the beginning of the stock bump stop, and at the time nobody was providing a KISS shock which could be run without dicking around with limit straps. There was great potential to bind the joint at full compression, particularly with a lower profile bump stop, and certainly the ability to bind the joint at full droop, if one did not use a limiting device. Trucks which found that weakness also found a wheel flopping around in a wheel well, and had to find a trailer home...there are a few good pictures in the desert forum showing this exact failure. In response, the company that built those kits released...spindle gussets! Most of the for/against discussion is in the desert folder on the Natl forum, and you'll find that it is usually the new, inexperienced, uninformed, or people with long signature lines that are for them, and experienced builders, racers, and similar who are against them, and say what I've said in a line or two..."if the joints don't bind, you don't need gussets!"

Enter two companies, and much later, a forum spat. Icon (then Donahoe) produced a shock with an internal limiter, aimed (successfully) squarely at the bolt-on market, solving the droop problem on the popular (and expensive) arms. Camburg began producing arms with an in-house designed hi-misalignment adapter and a higher grade bolt, allowing more misaligment than the off-the-shelf parts used in the original kit, preventing the binding that caused so much damage in the first place and precipitated the rush for spindle gussets. Later, a "discussion" between two vendors about whose joint could produce more angle culminated in a statement about how some people just want parts to talk about around the campfire, so why not build those parts? That was from a representative of the company which produced the arm with the binding joint, and the spindle gussets. At least that person also stated that it is the responsibility of the buyer to set up their suspension so that it does not bind, which is the ONLY time I've ever read that from a manufacturer on the TTORA forums, and incidentally it is more important when setting up that manufacturer's kits than others, because the misalignment spacers they use will bind before the other major manufacturer's parts. Then there are yet other houses which build extremely similar parts, and it isn't obvious where they clock their joints, so I can't say if they improved on the 1"-to-3/4" design or not. Hopefully they did, otherwise they're just copying garbage. Incidentally, the droop problem with those joints is exactly the same as what happens when using a thick top-load spacer on the 1st-gen trucks, but magnified due to the offset between the top of the spindle and the new joint.

Enter the new generation!

Everybody come and get your spindle gussets, because we're making them now, just like we did for the first generation, even though the spindle appears to my eye to be stronger than the first generation! Remember, this is the spindle that sustained minor bending when it was repeatedly jumped and run hard in extreme conditions using a studded 38x15 tire under a heavily loaded truck.

I don't believe for a second that the terrain and type of driving seen by a stock-class 2nd-gen anything will be sufficient to damage a spindle to the point where cyclic reheating of a heat-treated part will be beneficial. If you're running a large enough tire to really, honestly be concerned with damage to the spindle from side loading, you need a different spindle and likely a different drivetrain. If you're jumping, you need a cage, long travel, and suspension that will decelerate the frame and chassis in a way that prevents damage and fatigue. Personally, I feel the only people who don't understand this are people with stock-class trucks...people who seem to me to say "that doesn't apply to me because I'm not driving crazy", and then go jump their stock suspension with rubber bump stops--it's not about how high the truck went, it's about how gently it lands, and soft landings are key to keeping spindles (and the rest of the truck) in one piece.

I also find it incredibly hard to believe that a 1/8" thick mild steel gusset with go-fast holes (they're not even dimpled) is going to provide enough support to a 1" thick forged & heat treated part to prevent catastrophic failure or noticeable bending...in fact I'm just about willing to bet that if you put the spindle through such a ride that it would bend, you're gonna bend the gusset along with it...or tear it off, if the welds were cold.

If you're turning against boulders with a 35" tire to move the front of the truck around, you probably need a larger PS pump, larger ram, and different spindles...not gussets for the stock spindles. It is impossible to fit a larger tire on a new gen truck/suv without a drop bracket, and anyway I see most guys running 33" tires on the new gens because it doesn't require trimming the body mounts, drop brackets, solid axles or long arms...and a 33" tire doesn't need gussets on the spindle, unless you've already caged the truck, built the suspension, been racing it, and found that the spindle has begun to bend under extreme use. Also, I do not see for a second that rock use is harder than prerunning/desert use, or vice versa. If anything, I would expect desert use to be harder, simply due to high speed and big air...but "why we get away with stupid build ideas" is for a different thread.

In my own experience with a 1st-gen Tundra, I used (for several years) the original manufacturer's 1" bore uniballs, limit straps, and a set of low-profile bump stops. The 3/4" F911 bolts which ran through the adapter are currently bent such that I cannot remove the upper misalignment adapter without a press. There are grooves cut in to the adapters from the snap ring over the uniball. The quality and design of that manufacturer's kit compared to another's was a major part of what pushed me to the other manufacturer. Consider that in the original design, the ball of the joint was located in the ring at the top of the spindle. When a uniball is added to the 1st-gen trucks, it sits a couple inches above the top of the spindle, amplifying the torque of any binding at the uniball. I'm amazed my spindles are still in one piece. The other manufacturer's joint does not have this problem at all, therefore it does not need a gusset to support a bound joint...so I do not need these gussets I paid about 200$ for, between parts and install, nor did I need to weld to this very nice, very strong forged part.

The moral of the story is stay out of the Koolaid. Wish I had. They seem like a good idea...but unless I've missed widespread reports of bent 2nd-gen spindles from wheeling, they are not necessary, they are just hype, and of the manufacturers offering them, I suspect one is making them out of habit, and the others are following the leader.

Gawd, did I forget anything?

If you know of a bunch of people (more than one or two) who have bent their spindles through normal 4WD use (normal to us = everything you ran in Moab), I want to hear about it...preferably with some alignment numbers that show a bent spindle, rather than shade-tree alignment shop pronouncements of damaged parts that need service...been there a couple times ...if anyone wants to know how to identify a bent spindle, I can get in touch with the guy who designed the software for the Hunter alignment consoles, he drives a 1st-gen Tundra.

-Sean
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Coot83 · Feb 10, 2017

I have the swaybar-less TC spindle gussets on mine and Im considering seeing if I can box up the bottom portion of the spindle around the TC gusset. Anyone else considering doing this in the long term? I think my spindles will be ok in the interim as I just got these reinforced, but I think if I boxed up the TC gussets completely that might add some decent strength?

Coot

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98tacoma27 is going full "SANDWICH" Moderator

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