I was repacking the front wheel bearings
on my 1964 Newport the other day, and
a friend of mine, who has a GM car, was
hanging around my garage. He commented
about the Newport’s system of
locking the front spindle nut, he says GM
used a much better system with a beefy
nut with lots of slots, he called that a
“castle nut.” My Mopar, as I am sure you
know, uses a little tin gizmo for the cotter
pin to slide through. We got into a bit of
an argument, but I really didn’t know why
Chrysler didn’t use the castle nut system.
Please settle the argument.
If you think about it, a castellated nut typically
has 6 tits. Therefore, the nut can only
be locked in large incremental positions,
none of which might correlate with the
correct preload or endplay.
The Chrysler nut lock system provides
almost infinite precision. When Chrysler
used a castellated nut (as in suspension
and steering components), it only had
three tits, allowing similar precision.
