rear suspension 1

Alright so today was day one of swapping the rear axel and suspension.

I took some photos but they seem kinda random sitting here so prolly wont post any of them from today.

headed to the shop with the new parts, as well as stopping to buy some good drill bits, a gallon of water, some granola bars, and some brats. i mean come on, you expect me to starve to death working on this car? haha

alright so with the freshly removed gas tank out of the way i slid under the car to see what i was facing today. i dont see any way that any of this would be even remotely possible with out the tank out of the way .

any how i started off with pulling the friction shocks off the frame. they are held on by carrage bolts so there is no back on the back side to hold onto, thankfull the square hole in the frame they sit in wasnt rounded out or anything and they came out preety easy.

i chose to take them straight off at the frame because after considering removing just the dog bone connector<-- the passenger side unit already had the dog bone removed thus me considering that choice.

i ended up pulling the two bolts per side to take it right off the frame rail after realizing that with such a low arch frame and large rear spring hanger brackets they wold probably be in the way later anyways.

those came off pretty quick so i went to work on the pan hard bar, again i decided to remove the unit from the car by unbolting the bracket from the frame. i dont know that itd realy be in the way of anything later on but i figure if some ones going to buy the bar that they prolly like to have the bracket as well. that and the frame bracket bolts looked cleaner then the bolt that holds the bar to the bracket. figured go the path of least resistance.

i then moved forward of the rear and sawzalled the remanent of the exhaust out. with the clamps rusted on and so many bend it just did not want to slide out. And frankly i was tired of hitting my shin on it every time i walked by.

i then slid under the car and cut the brake flex line just ahead of the mounting point of the rear radius arms to the torque tube, i also disconected the parking brake at the clevis point. it was pretty tedious under there, and when i got it off i rolled over then line i was avoiding cutting just fell apart anyways, go figure haha.

so now all that is holding the rear suspension in is the U bolts.

until this point the car was being held up by jackstands at the axel. knowing i was getting ready to brake the rear lose i put the jack stands on the frame rails just a bit forward of were the front spring hanger mounts will go. this way the stands are still more towards the back of the car then the middle/back of the car and i dont need to re-position the stands more times then totaly necessary.

a good 9 feet of cheater bar and the u bolt nuts still werent realy into moving, about 10 minutes of blue wrench and they were STILL pretty stuborn. we have decided that superman never drove a 46 ford as the u bolts and nuts are obviously made of krptonite.

lots of fire, lots of 5 pound hammering and they popped off.

i failed to mentioned that i had stacked two 4x4's under the brake drums to take the stress off the spring, i always feel like im going to brake something having the rear axel just hanging in the breeze off the ground with a transverse spring set up. its probably un warranted but whatever.

i also put a beefy floor jack under the axel itself so i could have some more control over it coming down rather then just having it brake lose and just drop onto the ground.

with it all un bolted i it was just resting on the boards so i lifted it up with the jack and slid the boards out and let it down onto the ground.

then i went and grilled brats and felt accomplished. thats an important part of the process dont forget that part :)

plans for tomorrow are to drag the axel/spring/pan hard bar/torque tube out from under the car, drill 28 freaking holes, and bolt all the new stuff in minus the new 9 inch rear.

before i install that im going to put different gears, gaskets,seals,fluid, bearings, wheel studs, you know, all that stuff, as brakes and a new pads to mount it. seemed like it would make since to just leave it out and do all that on a table than to put it in and drag it back out or try to do it in the car.

hopefully ill have good news/progress tomorrow :) and some of the random pix today can be before pix for tomorrow?