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It’s time to start using some of these parts I’ve been stockpiling. I bought a full Polyurethane master bushing kit when I had my rear 3rd rebuilt. I only used the rear suspension bits then and sent the rest to a shelf in the garage. I knew LBJs were coming due and they too were ordered and put on the shelf. Then the ‘Rona came and a little stimulus helped persuade me to get Bilstein 5100s and they too went on the shelf.
Now it’s super maintenance time!!!
The rear shocks both snapped at the upper mounts when I tried to unthread them. That makes this job go 10x faster.
So the plan was shocks x4, LBJs x2, upper and lower control arm bushings, steering rack bushings, and sway bar bushings.
Well… like all great plans…
Day 1:
Swap rear shocks
Day 2:
The rear bolts of the lower control arms hit the steering rack when you try to move them. No big deal, I needed to take the bolts out of the rack anyway to replace the bushings. Well to get enough room to move the rack, I needed to remove the sway bar. No problem-o, I have new poly bushings for that too, except, 2 of the bolts snapped in the U-brackets that hold the sway bar.
Okay, so I ordered those. It was like $30 and the broken ones were 21 years old and pretty rough anyhow. No real loss. Now I have new sway bar brackets and bushings for reassembly, and I had enough free room for the steering rack to pivot and I could remove the LCA bolts.
I started with the driver’s side, it took most of the day to get it out since I had to loosen a bunch of other stuff first. I also got the shock/spring assembly out. I tried to compress the spring and swap out my shock. I thought I had the spring compressor that squishes from both sides, but either I lent it out or I'm miss remembering things that I have. Anyway, my compressor is meant to squish from the middle of the spring like rear springs and so I took the whole assembly over to a local shop and they swapped shocks for $40.
Upper and lower control arm bushings? That's a big job! I was doing the internet research to see if I could do mine. "No thanks", was what I decided. But then I'd be paying crazy money for a real mechanic to do them...so for now, they stay as-is.
Sounds like you've got the typical projects going on! "Things would be so easy if they weren't so hard..." Always something not going as planned.
Upper and lower control arm bushings? That's a big job! I was doing the internet research to see if I could do mine. "No thanks", was what I decided. But then I'd be paying crazy money for a real mechanic to do them...so for now, they stay as-is.
Sounds like you've got the typical projects going on! "Things would be so easy if they weren't so hard..." Always something not going as planned.
It wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound. I enjoy the dramatic for internet forum purposes. The longest part is torching out the old bushings and cleaning up the sleeves. If I would've ordered UBJs from the beginning and cut them off from the get go, I probably would've been done in 2 days. Honestly, I probably would've been done in a day if I was replacing the bushings with stock rubber bushings. Since I was swapping to the poly bushings, I needed to reuse the sleeves. New bushings would've had me push the whole bushing out sleeve and all (which is way easier because I could've just thrown it on the press).
My other hurdle was it has been like 100* and 90% humidity here in MD, so nothing makes me enjoy a task than baking in the sun and losing 10% of my body weight in sweat loss.
Day 3:
I spent several hours trying to get the UBJ to seperate from the UCA on the driver's side. When I had done the wheel bearing several years ago, I used a trick I saw on Pirate where you use a 3 jaw puller to clamp on to the UCA and push out the UBJ. Well this time it didn't work. I cranked on it, beat on the CA, beat on the knuckle, tapped on the UBJ with a brass punch, and it didn't budge. The only thing I didn't do was to heat the CA around the ball joint because I was trying to salvage the UBJ. It got the best of me. I looked up the price of new ones and they were only $45 from McGeorge. I ordered 2 and figured they would be here Friday or Day 6. A little help from my Sawzall and I was able to cut the stem of the UBJ just below the CA. The last thing to do until I would have an UCA in my hand was to remove the single top pivot bolt. Which meant removing the wiring harness hold down, and then the battery (which I broke the bolt thru the negative terminal), and then the airbag sensor, and then finally wiggling the bolt out until it nearly reaches the radiator. With that all said and done, I had the UCA out and I could start burning the bushings out.
Day 4:
I started early, and good thing because I only got a few hours of work. With the driver's side as my learning experience, I skipped some headaches and jumped right in. I removed the shock/spring assembly, cut the UBJ, undid the top pivot bolt (fortunately the passenger side bolt has room to slide out without removeing a bunch of other stuff), removed the UCA, unbolted the LCA... dammit. The rear bolt came free, but the front bolt and cam adjuster was frozen solid. It was no match for the Sawzall, so with 2 cuts I had the LCA out. Some much needed rain, but also a day of staring at the clock and not getting as much accomplished. I watched my email and didn't see my UBJ order process. Hedging my bets, I called the local dealer and he said he could get my UBJs for tomorrow. The price tag was about 3x McGeorge, but with the setbacks and no movement on my order, my need for the truck on day 8 for work was starting to come in to concern.
Day 5:
I called McGeorge, they said UBJs were in and shipping out today... it was Thursday and I would need everything to go like clockwork for them to arrive Saturday and everything go back together to drive to work Sunday. Good thing I order a backup set. I called local, my order was already in!!! Fantastic. Burning out the rubbers of the bushings isn't a one step process. I've found success in heating up the inner sheath until the rubber starts to blister and smoke, then heat the rubber until it catches fire. The hot inner sleeve keeps the rubber burning longer than just getting the rubber to ignite. Then you let them burn for awhile and eventually they go out, and you brush away the ashy parts and light it up again, lather, rinse, and repeat until you get down to the metal.
While I was burn cycling the bushings, I decided to replace the bushings on the steering rack. This was really straight forward. The steering rack is secured at 3 locations, a big collar bushing holds the rack on the passenger side, a super long bolts and bushing hold the rack on the driver's side front to back, and a smaller bolt and bushing hold the rack in the middle top to bottom. The driver's side and middle bushing replacement are made of 3 parts, 2 bushing halves and an inner sleeve. The old bushings were squished enough that I could pry them out with pliers and a screwdriver. The new bushings took some finesse, but once lubed up they squeezed into place.
I wanted to get as much done before I went into town to get the UBJs since we have been getting some fierce afternoon thunderstorms. With the passenger's side UCA and LCA cool and clean I could push the new bushings into place. Having a press makes pushing bushings a 60 job instead of hours of fighting with c-clamps and channel locks, and so so so much cursing. Installation of the CAs on the passenger side was really straightforward.
Before I went into town I stopped by a friend's house to borrow his BJ press kit. It had been left out since Day 3 and my original troubles, but now I really needed it. I also dropped off the passenger shock to get swapped.
UBJs are now in my possession.
Day 6:
Things are looking up. I now have UBJs. The passenger side just needed it's shock and UBJ and it would be done. I pressed the remains of the UBJ out. It takes some juggling until you get tension on the parts, but man, having the right tool for the job... like 2 minutes and the trashed BJ is out, probably another 30 minutes to get the new one pressed in. It wanted to tilt and bind, so I had to take it out a few times and file a ridge that got cut into the body. Once I got it squared up in the bore, it pushed in like a hot knife thru butter. I replaced the driver's side UBJ as well. That one went even quicker since I now knew what compliment of collars and cups to use. I had to do the same cycle of burning the bushings and then pressing the Polys in. Again this was my second side to put back together so it went much smoother.
With the control arms back in place, I pushed the steering rack into it's mounts and buttoned that up. I sprayed the rotors with brake clean, put the wheels back on and lowered the truck back on the ground. This is the first time she's been on 4 wheels in about a week. I put the airbag sensor back, and the battery, and replaced the terminal bolt. Then I started her up for good measure to make sure everything still worked.
Day 7:
Okay so she's still missing the sway bar and the skid plates, but I strategically left those off so the alignment guys had more room. Speaking of alignments, every shop within 30 miles of me was either booked to the gills or closed for the weekend. Well that's not going to work. I jacked the front of the truck back up, loosened all the adjusters, set everything to 0, and tightened it back up.
ROAD TEST TIME
With zero toe or camber and no sway bar, this thing is FUN to drive. Ultra light steering, easy mid corner adjustment, it's like riding my sportbike, oh yeah, and it won't self center. So stay on your toes.
Well something isn’t right with the alignment. And I should’ve said something sooner. It would squeal in the front doing any amount of steering input; lane changes, roundabouts, curves in the road. You’d think I was a foley artist for the next fast and furious movie.
so at work Wednesday I crawled underneath with the intent of greasing all my parts to find the front right tire is down to about 1/32”!!!!
The rest are 6/32”... grumble
in 2500 miles I scrubbed 5/32” of good tire off from a bad alignment. That tire is also feathered from the inside to the outside.
So this is how the alignment was done in July. Everything looked good. Within a day or so I started getting a lot of squeal from the front while driving.
I
I took it back to the alignment place and this is how it measured up. I don’t know what they didn’t tighten or what that caused a 2.25* change of negative toe to develop.
The bad alignment woes trashed 2 tires. The passenger front took more abuse than the drivers, but both saw shredding. I had to swap in the spare because the passenger tire was nearly bald.
This left me with 3 tires around 5/32” and 1 at 3/32. I didn’t want to run different sized tires on the rear and have the diff spin out of synch all the time. I had a roommate that cooked a front diff after changing a flat from a worn tire to a brand new tire but didn’t both to address the other side and go on a road trip, I realize that is totally anecdotal. Fortunately I can afford a set of tires, and so I bought a set of tires.
Plus it’s December and we could get some snow and I’d rather have fresh meats.
I had the local shop order up another 5 Kuhmo Crugen HT51. I’ll get another alignment from a different shop here in a few days.
oil change and filter. Small leak around the filter after start up. I’ve done maybe 1000 oil changes in my personal and professional life and this is the first to leak. I cleaned the block before I threaded through filter on, verified the filter had a gasket and that the old one came off, pre lubed the gasket with fresh oil like normal, and yet it leaks while running. Grrr. I’m probably going to end up eating a brand new oil filter.
After changing out the shocks this summer and lifting the front 1 notch on the Bilsteins, I found that I had a droopy backside. Prior to the new shocks, the front had always sagged so I thought a little lift up front would even things out.
Rather than getting the front shocks dropped back to stock height, I picked up some 1” lift blocks from Daystar. It was a very straightforward install and I was done in probably less than an hour. The lift is just 2 hard poly donuts that go on top of the rear coil springs between the coil and the bump stop. Installation was simple enough, jack the rear and remove the wheels. Lift the rear and support the vehicle with stands under the frame, I set mine just in front of the brackets for the trailing arms. Disconnect the end links and bottom shock bolts. Lower the axle down until the springs are free. Insert lift blocks. Lift the axle back up and reconnect the shocks and links and put the tires back on.
Well, it explains why hood and hatch are hanging open...
A lot of work, but well worth it- at least now that the alignment has been redone. Nice!
The oil filter leak....we've both seen them leak because of being over-tightened, but it doesn't seem like that would be your gig. Mebbe a bad seal or somehow misaligned filter housing surface? Weird.
So after the alignment correction the front end still didn’t feel right. I had to get new tires because the crap alignment ground them down. My tire guy doesn’t do alignments anymore because it was cost prohibitive to update his machine. So I tried the local 4wheel drive shop. Suspicions were confirmed and my alignment was jacked when he put it on the machine.
With the aftermarket mods you got, a lot can influence your alignments once it rolls off the lift. There comes a point where the type of tires, suspension changes, load patterns, and road conditions can mess with angles and measurements.
Just have to find that middle zone for your truck and it might not be dead center on the sheet, since those are considering factory specifications.
07-19-2020 | 10:41 AM
