i have a 1996 f150....spindle nut will not stay tight..is there a snap ring that goes in there?the ford garage told me there should be 2 nuts and a washer and a pin..but there is no hole for a pin in the spindle,just a groovefor what apears to be for a snap ring...

this is a 4wheel drive by the way..with manual lock-outs

if this is the case what size snap ring goes in there....

 

It sounds like the Ford garage is describing the typical 2WD front spindle setup, or perhaps the auto-locking hubs?

For the 4WD manual lockouts, there are 2 snap rings associated with the lock-out mechanism, an external one on the axle shaft and an internal one on the wheel hub.

The spindle nut for manual lock-outs is an odd beast with internal locking splines, takes a special tool to remove/tighten. If it is backing off, I suggest that the spindle nut itself is bad.

No idea on snap ring sizes - perhaps a parts store or Ford dealership can look these up. What happened to the old ones?

 

well whoever had the truck before me musta removed them and didnt put them back in...i didnt think about it at the time ..they had repaled the lockouts and aparently didnt do it right..and everything came apart and ruined all the internal parts in the lockouts so i had to replace them..

didnt think about snapring needed for the spindle nut and they started working free.

 

I could be wrong [it's happened before, believe it or not :-) ], but I don't think anything other than the spindle nut with its internal locking feature is required to hold the hub on.

All of the snaprings are associated with the lockouts.

 

wonder if the spindle nut needs replaced?if nto why would it lossen itself

 

To my knowledge, the spindle nut is all there is to hold the hub on. It's a goofy beast with it's own locking assembly. It's not like the hubs where two standard 6-sided nuts are jammed together with a washer pounded down on the nut flat-side.

If the spindle nut is backing off on your manual lock-out unit, I would change the nut. Look at the bright side - if this problem were on the other wheel, instead of loosening, you probably would've jammed the nut down until the wheel locked. :-)

 

OK here is how it works.. There is 2 nuts and a washer with holes in it. The washer has a tab to stop the nut from turning. The inside nut has a roll pin that sticks out to catch one of the holes in the washer. Then there is an outer nut to hold the washer down to the inside nut. Most ppl put the inside nut on throw the washer in there and tighten down the outside nut, crushing the roll pin. If this is not how your setup is you need some parts. The lock rings are just for the locking hub and axle itself. The nuts hold the rotor on. Good luck.