This may be a stupid question but bent my left front king pin bolt at some point, just discovered it was bent tonight. Margay no longer sells the 5/16 king pin bolts that were on their older karts. Has anyone used a hardware store bolt as a king pin? It would save me $80 if so. Otherwise I’ll have to upgrade all the front end hardware to 3/8. Thanks!
I’m not sure what yours looks like. I’d check with Ace Hardware first, and then McMaster.com if they don’t have it. I’d use a grade 8 shoulder screw under:
1 Like
Out of probably 30 karts which have passed through my hands over the years, only one had anything other than a commercial high tensile bolt or Allen screw as a king pin.
We went metric in UK some time ago , but when we were using 5/16 king pin bolts these would have been UNF thread to S standard.
Surprisingly an 8mm bolt measures exactly the same as 5/16 and the equivalent metric standard is 8.8.
Both these material standards are standard commercial and nothing special.
I would go for a bolt / Allen screw long enough to give enough plain shank to pass right through yoke, spindle, plus any caster camber adjustment you may have which probably means cutting off excess thread.
1 Like
Okay thank you very much for the help guys!