Front Spindles: What Are They?

What is a spindle? If you are scratching your head right now then don’t feel alone. Front spindles and rear spindles are crucial to your vehicle’s performance and yet most people couldn’t pick one out of a pile of automotive parts if their lives depended on it.

The front spindle is part of the suspension system and it carries the hub for the wheel and helps the wheel revolve around the axel properly. See, it is crucial, just like I said. If the spindle is not functioning properly then you are going to have serious problems with your wheels and axel and that is not good now is it?

By the way, in England they call spindles uprights but what do you really expect from the British?

A properly made spindle needs to be able to handle quite a bit of load and force, in the neighborhood of five times the acceleration of gravity. That, my friends, is a whole lot of force. Think about your vehicle for a second; you jump in your car and head to the store and the trip there takes ten minutes of driving and the trip back takes ten minutes of driving and in that twenty minutes of driving how many times did your wheel revolve on the axel? How much weight bore down on the axel and wheels in that time? You don’t need a degree in physics to know the answers to those two questions is a whole lot!

So what do you do when you need to replace your front spindles? Okay, that’s a tricky question because most drivers don’t even know what they look like nor would they ever know when a spindle needs replacing. We aren’t talking about replacing a battery or a radiator, two replacement parts that anyone can recognize. Our suggestion at Cash-n-Carry goes something like this: if you sense you are having problems with your suspension system then have a friend or relative who knows what the heck they are doing take it all apart and see how that front spindle is doing. Then head on down to our Savannah salvage yard and take advantage of the great deals we have on spindles and other salvage parts. If a mechanic does this job for you then plan on paying hundreds of dollars; if your cousin Pete does it for you it will cost you a half rack of beer. You do the math and decide whether to come down to our self serve junk yard or not.

And if you come down don’t ask us for an upright because we don’t speak British here!