Got some garage time today and made some good progress. I decided to deal with the rear body mounting shackle while I had good access. This required a little rearrangement of the cab brace, but nothing too difficult. I had already been soaking the bolts with penetrating oil, so this morning, I tried to move them with a normal socket wrench. They seemed pretty stuck, so I went to the impact wrench. Easy peasy, off they came. Thankfully, the parts are very heavy duty, because they were pretty rusty! Separating the two halves of the shackle was equally easy with the impact wrench. Getting the old rubber bushings out wasn't as easy, but they did eventually come out. Sadly, when I got a look at the bolts that were in the rubber bushings it was clear that they had corroded significantly. So...they will get replaced. I will clean up the bracket portions of the assembly and likely replace the shackle portion of the assembly with the bolts and nuts. I'll clean them up first and see if they are salvageable, but I'm not holding my breath. Interestingly enough, when I took the shackle assembly off of the truck, two shims fell onto the ground. They were in good shape and I've saved them for reuse when installing the refurbished assembly back onto the truck.
That's all for now. As always, comments and/or suggestions are welcome.
