Stuck in There

Today was the first day of our “fieldwork” and I knew it was gonna rain so I planned ahead. On Friday all of the parts I had ordered came in the mail, I right away installed some of the simpler ones like the distributor cap, the cap rotor, and the new spark plugs and wires.

A new spark plug I installed next to an old crusty one

The new wires and distributor cap

While I was at my Uncle's I grabbed the leaf springs that he had, long story that I'll explain in another blog post; but basically the ones on my truck are junk and these ones are like new. My project for today was to take out the old dried up bushings and replace them with new red performance ones I bought.

The new leaf springs

The old junk bushings that I'm removing

These new bushings came in a kit with every single thing I need to replenish these springs. I could either get them in black or red and I figured red matches the truck so that's what I got. The quality of them seems awesome, they're made out of polyurethane and are all the correct sizes.

At about noon I finally got to work in my barn, first thing I had to do was pound out the old bolts that had been on there since the early 80s, so they weren't coming out without a fight. I heated all of them up with a torch until the rubber was burning and then I elevated them on a plank of wood and pounded the end of the bolts out with a mallet. This method worked great on two of the bolts but the other two were a pain. Most of my day was spent trying to pound these other ones out but no matter how much I heated them up, pried on them, and tried to twist them, they wouldn't even budge. 

I texted my Dad and asked him what time he got out of work and if he could help me pound on them because after hammering for so long I was finally exhausted and took a break to go eat lunch and do some research.

An hour later or so my Dad gave me a call back and said to try soaking them in dish soap because sometimes it'll just help them slip right out. I went right back out to the barn with some Dawn and coated the bushings in them, and sure enough they slipped right out.

Here are the springs with the bushings removed

Where a bushings sat for 30 plus years

I didn't end up getting the bushings installed like I had hoped but now I have them all ready to be installed tomorrow, hopefully that process will be quicker than the removal was. I'll keep you guys updated daily with my progress! See ya tomorrow.