Rebuild of front suspension

[DR67]

Just drove the truck for the first time after replacing all front end parts and adding a front sway bar. WOW! what a difference. Plan on doing the rear this next week.



DR

[COBALT]

I'm just a bit ahead of you. I got the front-end done a couple of weeks ago, and have been spending the last two weeks tearing the rear-end out, and cleaning and painting the parts. If you have a coil suspension and it's never been apart your in for a chore. It's a real *****. Someone told me to invest in a band-aid company. I thought they were kidding. They weren't. Busted two knuckles open, sliced my right ring finger on the frame, and opened up my left index finger (finally healed) by accident. All that and I still had to cut the U-bolts with a repo saw, and grind out the bolts on the spring brackets using a freakin' dremel tool. Not fun.

It'll be easier once I get all the hardware and everything's clean and painted. Give a yell if you need help.

[Alex]

One suggestion: wear a good pair of leather work gloves to avoid busting your knuckles. You would also have more confidence in exerting more force on a wrench to get that stubborn bolt to turn.

[COBALT]

I just realized that I got all of my injuries putting in the new stuff so far, or doing tiny jobs where I couldn't use gloves! LOL

Yeah, I've got two sets of work gloves + rubber disposable gloves for cleaning and degreasing. My problem is that I take them off to get a cup of coffee, or puff on a cigar, and forget to put them back on.

One more thing - get a small propane torch. This was a life-saver. The big 1 1/16" nuts on the U-bolts, and the big 1 1/8" nuts and bolts that hold the trailing arms in are hard to get loose. Heating them up, and then letting them cool down helped break them loose. Do that a couple of times, and use a large breaker bar (I have a 3/4" drive bar + a 3 ft. steel pipe).

I found that using the breaker + the pipe worked great on those U-bolt nuts. You have to lean into it. On the trailing arm bolts I put the floor jack under the truck, and put a sand bag on it, with the breaker bar on whatever side allowed me to rotate the wrench up toward the bed of the truck (with a box wrench on the other side). Then I jacked up the floor jack until the end of the breaker bar was in the middle of the sandbag (set the floor jack parallel with the breaker bar, not perpendicular). Then I just slowly worked the jack handle to get the nut and/or bolt to pop loose. Any kind of movement is good, because worst case you can get some penetrating oil in there and work it out by hand after that.

Good luck.