well, i am rough on my 85 toy 4x2 pu..... anyways, jumped a set of railroad tracks today... landed hard... and felt the truck act wierd..... it was leaning hard to the right... under investigation, i figured i had blown the right side shock and deformed, bent part of the torsion bar anchor arm..... its now riding on the bumpstops with no suspension! what can i do? i need my truck as a daily driver... need to get this fixed though as well.... i was thinking for right now, i can jsut back the left side tb down so it sits level in the front at least... i know its not the best and the bumpstops are supporting the truck, but if the bumpstops completly desintegrate, then it will be metal to metal and that will hold for awhile if need be.....

 

the frotn suspension just has the tbar hanging there... its not even connected to the bolt right now... the bolt is jsut floating around and the anchor is at a perpendicular angle to the ground..... all bad...... is there a way to beef this up? or am i screwed due to the suspension design?

 

Total Chaos just came out with a Long Travel coilover kit that replaces the t-bar design. If your gonna jump your rig then you'll need it, otherwise try and keep your wheels on the ground and just replace the bracket that holds the bar to the upper a-arm, it's common for those to break under abusive conditions.

 

does my plan of just lowering the elft side so that it matches sound decent? until i can get the right side fixed?

 

im just having hte best luck lately....... i went outside and fired up the good ol air compressor, well i go to undo or loosen up the drivers side dso i can lower it down.... nothing... well it goes snap. the ends on the left anhor spread out and now both sides have no torsion bars supporting the truck... hey, at least its even now.........

 

YEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAA

 

so is it ok to run for awhile with no tbars?
i know it rides like crap..... but i just dont wnat to die or kill people out on the road.....

 

well went and did soem searching... dealership wants $100 per side;
e+j full service junkyard wants $50 per side, however i have to pull it (no big, takes liek 5 minutes per side) and a 22mm socket, wrench and a 10 mm wrench

will check pick and pull tomorrow, might get it cheaper than e+j

as for right now... going to drive with no suspension.... i say the bumpstops and the arms will support the truck for a few days..... been on the freeway and it feels fine..... just a little bit bumpier than normal, but it is wicked smooth thoughy until you hit a bump in the road then it bounces all over...

 

i'd say just head out to the junkyard. riding on the bump stops isn't exactly the best thing to do for a long time but it'll certainly work(don't guys that run 1/4 elliptical springs use their bumpstops for controlling ride height?)

good luck on that...remember, if it doesn't work, you could always go to coilovers in the future. now that would be sweet

 

hehehe... i know, im just doing it temporarily... the parts will be bought tomorrow or monday and will be put on sometime this week...... i saw some older trucks prob same body style as yours that were 4x2 and had coils in them.....

 

the sooner you get the new parts and install them the sooner you can get back to jumping tracks.

 

actually, '74-78 trucks(the ones with 4 headlights) had coils in the front. my buddy has owned 2 of them. they have body roll like you wouldn't believe though

 

got new anchors today, from dorris auto wreckers... $38 and somechange for the pair....

i actually got ones off a 89 toyota pickup... i realized in looking @ my broken ones that the part that broke has an open ended U type hape...... well, the one for the later truck, the 89 i got the parts from, actually has one side longer, and welded onto the otehr side effectively boxing the area that broke....

i think the parts i got are sufficient, however now that everything is back together, i realize my truck is now about 3-4 inches lower than it used to be up front! i think this might be due to the fact that the tbars might have been that badly cranked up, and thus caused the actual failure of the old part, or that the design is differnet on the newer ones..... hopefully its the first... its lower, but i still can pull u turns and stuff... i would rather have a working suspension and sacrifice tire to fender rubbing than tire clearance and sacrifice suspension parts...

 

Now go jump some railroad tracks!

 

pictures? of the jumping and the carnage

 

i already tossed out the parts... its not a big deal.... jsut ithink what happened was the added stress of 4" of torsion bar twistbasically made the thin stamped steel edges spread out

 

finally made a drawing of the part i broke and the part i replaced it with... you can see the obvious change in design... well i think... hard to tell off a drawing....

 

ok here is the pic fixed better... for clarification