Sorry for the long delay in an update! Between family reunions, weddings, sickness and the rest of life’s chaos, I haven’t had a chance to work on it much. I did drive it a few weekends ago and promptly got pulled over for no taillights… At least they worked for a couple of miles! I will worry about that later...
So last week I made it out to the shop to get it ready for the Cruisin’ the Woods pre-run. I decided that the front end walking under the rig while turning was bad and I was going to replace the bushings. When I started this process, I had no idea what the front springs were from or if the original hangers where used. After pulling it apart, I was even more confused! The hanger was 2.5” wide with a I.D. of 1”. That one was easy to figure out and I had bushings for it if I wanted to go back to the stock shackles. The springs on the other hand are 2.75” wide with a I.D. of 30mm… Apparently they were for a mini truck. The problem with that is the only bushings you can find are for an 18mm bolt, not the .5” bolt I need. Whoever put this together before sleeved the bushing with a piece of hose. I was not going to do that again!
Long story short-ish, I decided not to go with the sliders at this time mainly due to cost. I would eventually like to link the front and spending the extra money at this time on something I would probably cut off didn’t seem like a good idea. I came to the conclusion that I needed a 4” bolt-to-bolt shackle with a 0.120” offset and I wanted to run .5” hardware. Ruffstuff had the shackles I needed so I ordered them up. Next was the bushings… For the hanger bushing, I found that a CJ bushing would work and had the exact dimensions I needed. It is Energy Suspension part number 2.2117. For the spring, I was having a heck of a time. Apparently, nobody will list the dimensions of a Toyota pickup bushing! After a ton of research, I ended up getting the rear leaf spring kit for a 1st gen pickup (Energy Suspension 8.7101). This is more bushings than I need but I know that one of them is right! Now I just needed a sleeve to make the I.D. go from 18mm to .5”… Since I don’t have a lathe, I had to search for one. Finally, I found what I needed at Dave’z Off Road Performance. Hopefully all of my calculations where correct and the shipping is on time for me to get it together this weekend. I will make sure to snap some pics for y’all.
