Was driving on Saturday and heard a strange bang from the rear of the truck. I pulled over to inspect and did not see anything amiss. I had Ian bounce the truck and looked at the leaf springs and all I could really see was the "rebound spring clips" or clamps moving around more than I expected. So I researched that but it didn't seem like the smoking gun. I measured like an inch less ride height at the left rear, so this morning I took a closer look at the leaf springs and discovered something bad.
On the left side, the rear leaf spring shackle had rusted into two pieces, and the spring was being supported by the bed. Not good!!
The right side also looks like Titanic wreckage.
I was able to source ONE rear Dorman shackle from Advance Auto in Cranston. These weren't stocked at my usual local Advance or O'Reillys, which surprised me.
https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/dor ... 10242580-P
Of course it's nearly twice the price of Rockauto (well maybe not twice with shipping), but I was able to get it today.
Did the job in the driveway. Jacked up the rear high enough for the suspension to unload (which required like 8" of boards plus my jackstands at full height - actually I found out later that a few notches lower was better). In theory the job is simple. Unthread two bolts, remove each half of the shackle, install new shackle.
I started the lower bolt first. It would just spin. It looked like the head was a pan head with some sort of vestigial torx head but there was no way to grab it. So I ended up cutting through the bolt with my reciprocating saw. I did place the remaining stub in my vice and the nut came off pretty easily. Of course I did heat and soak it prior to cutting...Also the bolt itself looked pretty good through the shank, a lot like my front lower control arm hardware.
With the lower bolt done I turned my attention to the upper bolt. I was able to get my more compact impact on there and tried impacting to see if the nut would just come off. It did. However, the bolt was super frozen in the leaf spring bushing. I ended up using a combination of a pipe wrench to break it free, then beat it a little, then turn it again, then beat it a little. This was very tedious. I tried some punches and I think had the best luck with the remaining part of the lower bolt as a drift. I really could have used one of those palm-sized air hammers. It also didn't help that the truck height was like too high to reach from my creeper and too low to sit under. I ended up lowering it down a few notches on my jack stands which did help.
Once the rusted crap was off, reinstallation took 10 minutes.
Here is the old shackle.
And here is the rust pile.
To "torque" the bolts I simply used my mid-torque and buzzed the nuts on until they stopped turning, and the truck drives normally again. It's like working on farm equipment which I can say is different than working on Mercedes products. I should order another one for the pass side and put that in the parts funnel because I'm not sure that one has another winter in it. Maybe I'll splurge on the Moog for $35 because it may have a better paint job than the Dorman (not that it matters with this truck). The Dorman is $24 on Rockauto. The SKP is the cheapest for $13 and has the heart, lol.
I'll note that a couple weeks ago I was horsing around with the kids and they wanted to race it in reverse while I backed into my spot. So I did, and used nearly WOT which left 10 feet of rubber on my driveway. I do not believe this was good for the rusty shackles.
I should also note that despite the left rear leaf spring having only 50% of its retention, the truck seemed to track normally. Leaf springs are not refined but they are robust.
99 Ram: Leaf spring tried to fall off
99 Ram: Leaf spring tried to fall off
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