Finally slammed my truck!

[jonathan-m]

Not quite the way I was expecting to do it though.....

This was her normal stance:




Aaaand this was her stance on monday morning:





looks pretty bada$$ huh.... or maybe not

Monday I was having a spectacular morning, had just finished up some business that I'd been working on for several months, and everything couldn't have been better. I had the rest of the day off, I was all dressed up and professional looking. I was feeling Super Fly and riding around town in my truck. I turned into a parking lot to get some ice, and BAM I feel the front drivers side hit the ground and grind to a halt.
$hit.

I got out, tried to look underneath the old girl to see what happened, and after a bit deduce that my front A arm has separated.... soo, I've got all my tools in my truck, but I'm all dressed up and stuck in a parking lot 30 minutes from home and its 8:30 in the morning.... whats a guy to do? I called my best friend up ( he was asleep, poor guy), and told him I was stuck. He didn't ask any more questions, said he'd be there in 30 minutes-- just hang tight.

sure enough, 30 minutes later my buddy shows up with a change of clothes and some jack stands, and we get to work figuring out whats up. We jacked the old girl up and find that the ball joint had somehow cracked in half right under the nut, and the whole thing obviously went flying apart. luckily the truck pinned the spring down so it didn't go flying out. The odd part was, I'd replaced the ball joints not six months before with fresh ones, and I'm gentle as can be with this truck, so I can't imagine that it was ever over stressed... it just cracked right in half.

No problem, we drove over to a local auto parts store, rented a ball joint press and bought a new ball joint. Took it back to the parking lot and did the whole job right there where she sat. Took us about two hours, from start to finish. Luckily, nothing else was damaged from the whole deal.

After all that mess was done, we decided the best thing to do was to give her a thorough test drive, so after getting her back home we called up some girls, packed up his car (with the girls) and my truck (with the coolers), and off to the beach we went hahaha.

All in all, the day started out great, got a little bumpy, but finished pretty damn strong. Thank god for good friends.
Hopefully next time my old girl gets low like that it wont be quite so spontaneous

[onequickchevy]

Nothing like friends that you can rely on. Glad you and the truck are ok, that could have been nasty at speed for sure!
Posted via Mobile Device

[lolife99]

Maybe that was your truck trying to tell you something,... "lower me a little more". Ha.
Cool truck!

[ksbrktracer]

Originally Posted by lolife99

Maybe that was your truck trying to tell you something,... "lower me a little more". Ha.
Cool truck!

I agree bring it down....... I'm scared of heights !

[ol_skool_chevy]

Is the lowered photo when it was broken or after you fixed it?....it looks broken in the Photo....
Mine is low but wow...yours sits too low unless its broke here.
Nice truck though I love it

[Gkirk]

cool truck i think its funny my truck has a white cab and a black bed lol oh well how did you get the stance that it has what springs did you use that is just the way i want my truck thanks cool truck

[onequickchevy]

I think something was lost in translation. He didn't lower his truck, it broke, and slammed the tire up into the fenderwell. The slammed part was a joke! I agree though, it would look good that low.

[ol_skool_chevy]

your right....I translated what you said as your lowered the truck and because of it being so low you hit something and broke it...
I got ya now.

[61_FL_Apache]

Funny story!

[fryer1979]

Like mentioned above: it's a very fortunate thing this failure didn't happen at a much higher speed, the carnage would be unsightly to say the least. Glad you were able to fix her in short order, thanks to the help of a good friend. And the day ended with good friends, the beach, cold beverages, and a running truck, couldn't have been better.

[Gkirk]

no i was wondering about the first pic what springs did you use to get it to set like that

[jonathan-m]

Originally Posted by Gkirk

no i was wondering about the first pic what springs did you use to get it to set like that

I cut one and a half coils off the front stock springs to get that height. If you remove the bump stops and install a quality set of shocks up front the feel of the ride is not affected at all.

[jonathan-m]

Originally Posted by fryer1979

Like mentioned above: it's a very fortunate thing this failure didn't happen at a much higher speed, the carnage would be unsightly to say the least. Glad you were able to fix her in short order, thanks to the help of a good friend. And the day ended with good friends, the beach, cold beverages, and a running truck, couldn't have been better.

Ya, I was really lucky in this situation. I'd had her up at 55 mph not two minutes before this happened. I would imagine at those speeds I would not have been walking away so easily

[irish1966]

Cool story man. It's always good to hear we are not alone in our crazy plights to own these cool old trucks and of course the trials and tribulations involved.