Light At The End Of The Rabbit Hole

 Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

I've been able to get out into the garage this week and do a little work on replacing that worn out front shackle.  As you may remember, I was waiting for delivery of parts.  They came in and looked pretty good:

NOS Parts Box

NOS Front Shackle Parts

Nothing like using NOS (New Old Stock) parts.  You know they'll fit, assuming that you bought the correct version and no one, over the last 70 years, put the wrong parts in the box that services your truck!

Time to get to rebuilding!  First up, pressing in the bushings.  To do that, I'm using the same tool that I used to remove the old ones.  It's a 5/8" piece of all thread with a washer and nut on either end and a piece of 1" ID pipe on the far end.  I'm using the old bushing as a spacer to help drive the new bushing into place.  The tool assembled, both the spring eye and bushing pre-greased and ready to press the new bushing in, it looked like this:

Seating the new bushing 

Both bushings installed looked like this:

Bushings installed

Next up, pre-greasing inside the threaded bushing and the shackle pin, then threading it onto the shackle bushing.  It looked like this when installed:

Shackle pins installed

All of that was the easy part....  Now to add the sides to the shackle.  This will entail aligning all of the openings and pins and getting the shackle bolt installed to hold it all together.  

Try #1 did not line up!  Somehow, the spring had moved about 1 1/2 inches inboard....  Can I move it by hand?  No, I can not!  What to do?

Try #2: get creative!  Down to the basement, back with a C clamp and an extra long bolt.  The thought here is to get the shackle sides in place on one pin each, use the extra long bolt to keep the sides from falling off and them use the C clamp to move the spring outboard and (hopefully) into the other pins.

Did it work?  Yes it did!  It was an incremental process, requiring some gentle taps with the ball peen hammer (hey, the shop manual says to do that!) and further tightening of the nuts on the extra long bolt.  Once the space between the shackle sides had been closed enough for the regular bolt to fit, I switched to that bolt.  At that point both shackle sides had engaged all four points on the shackle pins and it was just a matter of properly tightening the bolts.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what started this whole evolution....  Did you remember?  Yup, the darned cork grease seal!  Thankfully, I only forgot to mention it here.  In the assembly process I remembered!  The Factory Assembly Manual requires 8-10 ft lbs of torque on the bolt.  Got out the old torque wrench, did what the FAM requires and when said and done, it looked like this:

Fully Assembled Shackle

Here's a shot looking behind the shackle at the neoprene grease seals:

Neoprene Grease Seals Installed

With the right (passenger) side completed, it's off to the driver's side for the same process.  I already have those parts, so it's just a matter of disassembly and rebuilding.  Sounds simple, right?  What could possibly go wrong....  I guess we'll all have to stay tuned to find out.

While I was waiting for my NOS parts to arrive, I did manage to find some time to test out the process of drilling out spot welds.  All in preparation of the next phase (rot removal and sheet metal repair).  Here's a shot of the first piece of rot removal!

Rotten Piece Over Replacement Piece

As the caption says, I set the rotten piece that I removed on top of the replacement piece to show what had rotted and what was left to be replaced.  This is the inner front cowl on the passenger side.  This view is from the inside of the cab looking at the part.  To put it into perspective, this is what you'd see if you sat in the truck and looked down at your feet and the inside of the cab.

That's all for now.  I'll wrap up the whole engine bay cleanup/front end suspension rebuild when I get done with the process.  Stay tuned!