Thought I'd share how I fixed my coil buckets after work the other day, to help anyone with my lessons learned.
The creation of the bends involved an 8" ledge the wrong way during some spirited driving, a slightly smushed koyo 30303 HI-CAP bearing, 3 bent $25 rims, and one tire blowout. Honestly the biggest tragedy of the whole deal was that almost new BFG KO3. I also don't believe in triple ply sidewalls as much as I used to, but gained a new faith in wet paper towels to temporarily seal a tire bead.
The coil buckets were probably bent in the past a little bit from air time, but this one dropped the front end more noticeably, gave me a very slight pull to the right, and made my bumpstops miss the axle pads by 50% so I was stuffing tire into the fender frequently when offroading.
Back to the main subject:
Unbolt the shocks, take out the coil springs, and do something about the brake lines if you don't have extended ones.
Put the bumpstop tower back in, it'll hold the top of the bucket itself flatter even though it's only 2 bolts. (I didn't do that in the pic, and this side is no longer a perfectly flat surface).
Pry on it from the bottom of the frame with a a 10ft aluminum bar, a rusty old C clamp (but very heavy duty, it was a beefier one than a 5600lb one from mcmaster carr), and a short bit of chain. I was was only putting like 80 lbs on the end of the bar, so a shorter one could probably do.
The rectangular-ness and narrow profile of the 4" x 3/4" bar allowed me to hook it onto welds for the frame-bumpstop-thats-not-there to better control the direction of the pull.
Keep some "shim" pieces on hand in 1/2"-1" thicknesses, you need the bar to start pretty much level or the clamp will slip off, and having those with an extra jackstand to rest it on made it pretty easy.
Don't pry on the outermost part, do it at the halfway point. It'll pull the outermost part down by a lot (too much if you pulled on the outside at the beginning).
Jack the axle back up to check bumpstop alignment frequently (to pick which side of the bucket to pull down on), this is where I called it good enough.
Once I did this, I can now drive hands off, with terribly unbalanced KM3s that I got off marketplace for $200, for a scary long distance. Zero pull to either side now.
I am stock ride height with fresh-ish bushings (3 years ago) so its road manners are impeccable of course.
Luckily my front axle seals hadn't started leaking into the birfield a couple thousand miles later when I replaced the knuckle bearings, so I don't believe it bent the axle.
Also, if you need to replace your knuckle bearings, you don't actually have to take all that much apart. Just take off the caliper, ABS sensor, top and bottom pivot pieces, and you can slide the whole knuckle/spindle assembly out of the axle to replace the bearings. It's a tad unwieldy though, especially on reassembly.
The creation of the bends involved an 8" ledge the wrong way during some spirited driving, a slightly smushed koyo 30303 HI-CAP bearing, 3 bent $25 rims, and one tire blowout. Honestly the biggest tragedy of the whole deal was that almost new BFG KO3. I also don't believe in triple ply sidewalls as much as I used to, but gained a new faith in wet paper towels to temporarily seal a tire bead.
The coil buckets were probably bent in the past a little bit from air time, but this one dropped the front end more noticeably, gave me a very slight pull to the right, and made my bumpstops miss the axle pads by 50% so I was stuffing tire into the fender frequently when offroading.
Back to the main subject:
Unbolt the shocks, take out the coil springs, and do something about the brake lines if you don't have extended ones.
Put the bumpstop tower back in, it'll hold the top of the bucket itself flatter even though it's only 2 bolts. (I didn't do that in the pic, and this side is no longer a perfectly flat surface).
Pry on it from the bottom of the frame with a a 10ft aluminum bar, a rusty old C clamp (but very heavy duty, it was a beefier one than a 5600lb one from mcmaster carr), and a short bit of chain. I was was only putting like 80 lbs on the end of the bar, so a shorter one could probably do.
The rectangular-ness and narrow profile of the 4" x 3/4" bar allowed me to hook it onto welds for the frame-bumpstop-thats-not-there to better control the direction of the pull.
Keep some "shim" pieces on hand in 1/2"-1" thicknesses, you need the bar to start pretty much level or the clamp will slip off, and having those with an extra jackstand to rest it on made it pretty easy.
Don't pry on the outermost part, do it at the halfway point. It'll pull the outermost part down by a lot (too much if you pulled on the outside at the beginning).
Jack the axle back up to check bumpstop alignment frequently (to pick which side of the bucket to pull down on), this is where I called it good enough.
Once I did this, I can now drive hands off, with terribly unbalanced KM3s that I got off marketplace for $200, for a scary long distance. Zero pull to either side now.
I am stock ride height with fresh-ish bushings (3 years ago) so its road manners are impeccable of course.
Luckily my front axle seals hadn't started leaking into the birfield a couple thousand miles later when I replaced the knuckle bearings, so I don't believe it bent the axle.
Also, if you need to replace your knuckle bearings, you don't actually have to take all that much apart. Just take off the caliper, ABS sensor, top and bottom pivot pieces, and you can slide the whole knuckle/spindle assembly out of the axle to replace the bearings. It's a tad unwieldy though, especially on reassembly.