64V2488 Rehabilitation
Rear Leaf Spring Rehab / 19 - 20 May 2001
DAY 2
Day 1
You can see under the leaf spring mount where we're going with this. The leaf
spring has to be removed anyway to get the mount off to repair the frame.
Never having done this before, things went slow in removing the spring.
Didn't want any surprises. Blocking the car on the frame and lowering the
axle takes the weight off the spring and the front bolt slid right out.
The rear shackle wasn't that easy. The bolt heads were cut off and even that didn't free the 1/4" steel hangars. A tie rod remover tool had to be used to pry and bend the bejeesus out of it to loosen these. Finally removed the spring and lined up all the parts to take inventory.
The next trick was to remove the remnants of the bushings inside the spring
loops and the rear frame housing. Whatever you hear about ways to do this,
the truth is it's a lot of work. I found that you could cut use a 1/8"
drill to cut the rubber away from the steel collars. If you get the bit right next to the inner collar, it will walk around the perimeter and cut it right up.
Next you have to punch the inner collar out, clean out the old rubber and use a
hack saw to cut thru the outer steel sleeve and create a breech to get it to
give up. A sharp chisel and edge punch are needed with a good deal of patience.I was up to 5 hours on day 2 to just clean out the old shells.
Here are some of the remains
Cleaning out the loops is the next chore. The rust created an extra thickness
that must be removed and the surface polished to ease the installation of the
new bushings. File out the rust, sand it smooth
Then the bushings have to be cleaned off and polished up. The anti rust coating
makes for extra thickness. Remove the coating and lubricate it with silicone
grease.
Use a good lubricant, either silicone or some other non rubber fouling type to
coat the shells of the bushings and spring loops. Threaded rods of the same
diameter as the fastening bolt will ease the installation with a combination
of large washers and spacers. This is a do as you need process and there's no
way to describe any specific process other than it's tedious. Getting the 3
bushings in took around 2 hours.
Final product.....now for the other side.......