2016 Kingpin Bearing Change

Car 5 years old 24,000 miles. November 2016

Both sides worn and would be MOT failures.

2009 car had them done at 30,000 miles under warranty.
2007 car had them done at 30,000 miles a month out of warrany, Suzuki did not want to know.

I changed the bearings in the 2007 car, spring 2010. Used a 1" AF socket to hammer out the bearing races as advised by Martin!

I change both sides last week on the 2016 car, the lower nearside bearing was toast. The upper nearside bearing was in good condition. The offside had a good bottom bearing and the top bearing was toast.

The only thing to advise when doing them on the 2016 car is that the 1" AF socket was too large a diameter to knock out the races. I tried loads of sockets from a good few sets but nothing fitted.

I got the old 1" AF socket and using the bench grinder, reduced the outside diameter from 35.2mm to 34.8mm. Remembering to wear saftey specs and gloves.

Worked a treat!!

I did the Kingpin bearings on my 2011 Gen3 and my nearest socket (can’t remember the actual size) would go so far and then get stuck.

Still it moved the race far enough and a large drift (chisel) did the rest.

Your experience is interesting, assuming it was the same 1” socket something must have changed size (shoulder in the swivel), as far as I know the bearings are the same size.

Same bearings but a small change in the swivel unit. Could well be dimensional tolerance issue only.