When I was removing the nut a piece of the cotter pin got jammed up in the threads and f'd up all the threads on my 1LE spindle.

The factory threads are 3/4"-20. I was thinking of rethreading it to the next size down, which would be a M18-1.5 and putting a M18 slotted nut on the spindle.

Anyone else have suggestions?

 

what threads exactly? to my knowledge, there are no threads on the spindle, only holes for the dust shield, or in you application the caliper bracket. Almost sounds to me like your talking about the lower balljoint, in that case, just replace the balljoint

 

The nut that holds on the rotor assembly and wheel bearings.

 

ahhh, missed that one, silly me.

hmmm, how bad are the threads? could you just run a die down the threads and clean them up?

If its beyond that, i dont see why you couldn't re-thread them, but to do it right the threaded part would need to be ground down to the exact diameter for the new threads and be round. Not sure if you could just "wing it".

 

The threads are pretty bad from the cotter pin outwards, but they aren't bad where the nut actually goes when it is tight. I'm looking for a 3/4"-20 die to just clean it up, but it is not a common size. 3/4"-16 is standard fine pitch so our spindles are even a finer pitch than normal.

 

how sure are you that the threads are not metric? i have never heard of 3/4-20, nor can i find one.

 

100% sure, I spent about 6 hours looking up spindle nuts. I bought a stock spindle nut at NAPA and it showed the thread size on the computer.

 

http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/item....&group_ID=2425
i found one! it does exsist

 

You could also try a thread file. Has multiple thread pitch spacings on it to clean up existing threads.