At the end of last year someone contacted me through the website to tell me that you can get oversized king pins from 2CV Viking. Not only was this true, but there are even different sizes available, so I bought myself a set of calipers and figured I'd reserve a couple of weekends in my folks' garage to set up, knock out the old pin, measure the amount of wear, buy an appropriately sized new pin, and fit it.
After a good amount of searching high and low here, at my parents, and back at Ross's gran's garage I eventually found the drift set that I'd bought from ecas back in 2006. I'd lost the instructions but Roy at ecas very kindly emailed me a fresh copy.
Although it had been 6 years the process came back to me, and armed with instructions, Haynes manual and my own accounts on this website it was fairly easy. Dad isn't equipped with an anvil, so we made do with a nice log from the wood pile to support the arm:
I think that its fair to say that the shim that we had made in the hours before the final MOT (and Ross and Amy's wedding) had finally given up the ghost. It had only been a piece of coke can - the inspiration had come to Ross in the early hours (thanks to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), and it had not only worked a treat in getting us through the MOT, but had also lasted 6 years! Here are its remains for the internet to preserve for eternity:
After mucking about with the cheap calipers I'd bought to measure the arm, the scientist in me was fairly sure that the margin of error in my measurements was greater than the range of sizes available. I took an average, and then discovered that ecas also sell an oversize king pin, and it seemed to my guestimations to be the size I wanted, so ordered it (remembering that I needed to buy a new split pin for the driveshaft nut as well).
With everything cleaned up, the play in the old pin was evident. The new pin was perfectly snug though, and took an appropriate amount of force to bang in to place with the drifts so everything felt tight when it was all back together:
Everything seemed to have gone to plan, just have to hope the garage are happy with it when the MOT comes around. Many, many thanks to William for the oversize kin pin tip off!