caper

Well I figure its time to try and fight the rust on my grail before its too late, just moved back to the salt belt and it wont take long to explode and I have to replace brake lines and fuel tank sender so might as well take the box off and do a bunch of stuff. Ill do the front half of the truck next year as just doing the back is kicking my Edit right now




So I sand blasted and used chassis saver paint on everything , bought poly spring bushings but didn't end up putting them in as the factory ones seemed to be still good and soild (got lazy and didn`t want to deal with getting the old one out ), so here is the question , I put new shackles in as they were not too bad but I replaced them anyways . so whats the deal on tighting up the shackles , I heard its something like 200 ft lbs , if you do that it will bind the metal sleeve in the middle of the bushing and nothing will rotate as the outside bushing rubber is fused to the spring eye . Wouldn`t these have to be loose enough to let the middle metal sleeve rotate , If you put poly ones and lube the outside of the bushing and make sure the inside of the spring eye is nice and smooth I could see to tightn it good as it would rotate at that point so it wouldn`t matter if it was real tight . Anyone pickn up what I`m putting down É





also bought this brake line flare tool from eastwood , highly recommend it never had one bad flare and easy to use , it is awesome also used nickel copper line and stainless steel gravel guard





need to buy a draw straw for this as they were metal in 98 dammmm







had to cut one out as the bolt was frozen

gorms

When I did the shackles I just tightened them with a 2' breaker bar, good and tight. Once you get a few tons of weight over the spring for leverage it wont matter if the pin can rotate or not, the rubber will just twist a few degrees.

caper

Yes , but it will not give a full range of motion and cause binding and possibily a stiffer ride ? Just thinkn out loud here . I might leave them a little looser and use nylock nuts and tread locker and see how that rides . The bolts cant come out even if the nut came off as they will hit the frame and the side of the trailer hitch

torquefan

The shackle bolts have to be very tight. The center of the rubber bushing isn't meant to turn, the only provided movement is the rubber flexing, otherwise noise would be bad and parts would be grinding themselves to pieces. The manual has all the torque specs, but I don't have it handy right now.

caper

I suppose that is right for the stock rubber bushings , but would not be the same for poly as the inner metal sleeve is not attached to the bushing nor is the bushing attached to the spring eye , it would have two places to rotate on the inner metal sleeve and along the spring eye wherever there was the least resistance it would happen .

gorms

Do a search for "sulastic" shackles, gives them an extra pivot point to smooth things out. Somewhere on here there is a pretty good review of them.

caper

Also removed this rotting p.o.s load sensing proportion valve and replaced / by passed it with a RAYBESTOS BH38576 line . hopefully my rear brakes wont be too grabby as some reported , I cant see how it would be any different than my 02 or any truck that didn't come with the valve . We will have to wait and see