Axle Swap questions

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Axle is off today. Oil drained. Brake lines and ABS harness removed from axle. Needed the impact to encourage the shocks to come off the axle without destroying them. Floor jack and jack stands to slide it out.
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The back lower arm frame mount bolt did not want to budge. So, I had to get a little creative with a pipe and floor jack to keep the socket straight.
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The passenger side didn't have enough room to make much progress with the pipe, so I used the floor jack to get it turning.
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Now that they are off I need to look up how to index the caster bushings.
 
Difficult to find any time lately to work on the truck. Today, my 9 year old daughter wanted to help me so we removed the extra front control arms off the donor axle and slid it under the truck. We tried to start pressing the bushings out of the control arms to change out but the 12 ton press was not up to the task. Any tips on changing these bushings?
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20 ton press has to labor to push them in/out. Dont clean up the bores on the arms too much or they will start rotating as suspension cycles. Supposed to be interference fit and stay in one place. Last thing we do is torque all the radius arm, control arm, and panhards after rig is sitting on the ground with all shocks and springs in place. That way the bushings are not preloaded up or down when rig is sitting still. They all go to 130 ft# exxcept one end of rear panhard goes to 160. Thats about enough to rip the wheels right off your creeper!!
 
Just got the first one out! A little bit of labor with a hack saw. With cuts to take the pressure off, it falls out.
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Finished one arm tonight. Pressed in the caster bushings and offset frame bushing.
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If you’re using a 12 ton harbor freight press, be sure and replace the upper 2 bolts with grade 8 before they snap.
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Finished the other control arm tonight. Next step is to hang the axle.
 
Hung the axle tonight with a little help from the family. Really wasn’t bad at all. Hardest thing sometimes is finding the time.

We started with mounting the lower control arms to the axle and then rotated the frame mount to attach to the Land Cruiser. Using a long punch started one side to hold in place until we could get the other side into place. Then we loaded the springs, setup the shock bushings, and put the shocks in the axle to lift into place. Using the Bilstein torque specs and a crows foot, torqued the shocks to spec. Upper was 10 mm and lower 12 mm.
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Tonight worked on putting the ABS and brake lines back in position, the Panhard, and the tires. I found that jacking up the drivers side of the axle moved the Panhard into position and with a little muscling I was able to get the bolt in. Will leave all of the bushing bolts loose for now until the motor is back in for weight. At this point, need to move the cruiser in the garage and will later come back to this part of the project once I receive the rest of the parts for this. Ever misplace parts? Next up is tranny/transmission attention and upgrades.
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The other funny thing is that this 80 started out as my project and now has turned into “her” car!
 

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