McGaughy's

[w00dst0ck]

I've always bought drop spindles/springs/bags from other venders before, but I decided to check out the McGaughy stuff on my newest Suburban build.

Ordered 71-72 Drop Spindles. They showed up a week or so later, in a box marked 71-72 with the correct part numbers. Immediately I could tell they were Pre 71 because the tie rod end bores were tiny. Called the vendor I originally purchased through, and they directed me to McGaughy's because it wasn't an issue on their end, the spindles were packed incorrectly.

Called McGaughy's, and right off the bat their tech support assured my I did not have the correct part numbers for tie rod ends, and that there's no way they would have fit the ball joints if they were pre 71 (even after I told him that they all share the same balljoints, and they fit perfectly).

Emailed about 5-6 pictures of the issue. I called back, he kept saying that it was impossible because they put different color dots on the spindles, and mine had the correct white dot.

The week ended with him saying he needed to do more research, while I pulled out a reamer and opened the tie rod ends up to the correct size. Long story short, no one should have to modify a brand new $250 pair of spindles that were marked and packaged incorrectly. Nor as a small shop owner, have to spend an entire day emailing/calling to prove they got shipped the wrong parts.

From such a big company, I expected their tech guys to know what they're looking at and offer to send me a replacement.

[hewittca]

Sounds like a frustrating mixup. I'm not trying to question you, but I am just curious because I'm not an expert on the differences and am only going by what I've read, but I recall seeing that the 71-72 trucks have their own upper ball joint and tierod ends, and share the same lower ball joint as the 73-up trucks. So if those spindles fit on your truck (minus the tierods), how could they have been pre 71 spindles? I read the 73-up tierods share the same thread as the 71-72, so maybe it is possible that someone along the way put the wrong tierod ends on your truck and then reamed out the spindles to fit? Again, I'm not sure, but just trying to give some other thoughts to help clear things up. By the way, I got all my info from a very good FAQ written by lolife99 here.

[w00dst0ck]

all 71-87 share the same tie rod ends, with the bigger bore center links.

[hewittca]

Good to know, thanks. It's a shame you had to modify a brand new part that was supposed to fit.

[w00dst0ck]

Picture of an this spindle on 71-72 balljoints. It does in fact work. Unless, it is a 71-72 spindle, and it was a production mess up and they just didn't bore out the tie rod ends large enough. Either way this picture shows the spindle on 71-72 balljoints and clearly shows a 72 tie rod end not able to fit the spindle. That's all I should have had to send.

Emailed them back just now, we'll see.

[NC_John]

I think it's pretty sh*tty the original vendor directed you to mcgaughys to fix the problem yourself instead of taking care of it for you. I guess they figured you went through them just for the thrill of using a middleman.

I bought a set of drop springs from mcgaughys a while back. They charged my card immediately and a couple weeks later (and after several emails saying they were "shipping tomorrow") I still didn't have my springs. When I gave up and called they apologized and said they were backordered and credited my card immediately. I got them from summit (cheaper!) the next day.