Had one break in the same spot on my '93. Was doing donuts in my freinds muddy field and at one point it seemed to lean real hard to the outside. I assume that's when it happened. Also it's definately a harder job than the good folks at Haynes make it look lol.

 

OK well today I finally got my leaf spring (JY pulled it for me) for 53 bucks. My dad and I started working on it so I'll post up a few pictures to show the progress:

You can actually see the "new" leaf spring in the bottom right corner,




I'm not sure if I should replace the spring mount in the 2nd picture. What exactly is it called anyway?

And so far, I got the nut off of the bolt holding the front of the spring onto the frame. I'll have to find a way to slide that bolt out. Also, with a wrench with a long handle, we managed to snap off both bolts holding the outside U-bolt in. We haven't gotten to the inside one yet. I hope all goes well and that my James will be back on the road in a couple days! Fortunately there's no big hurry since the weather is supposed to be fine until Monday so I don't have problems driving my Trans Am for now.

 

I guess I'll keep talking to myself then... lol

OK got the old leaf spring out and got a good one from the junkyard... can you guess which one is the broken one? lol


Just picked up new bolts and u-bolts today (nuts on u-bolts require different size wrench ):


Here's the truck with the leaf spring off:


With penetrating oil, the bolts came off without using a torch or cutter. However the u-bolts snapped with the long wrench we used while trying to remove em... no biggie though. I still have 1 more u-bolt nut to remove and the bolt holding the back of the spring to the frame mount.

 

Looking good so far. I can't believe you got the bolt out of the spring hangers with out using a torch! Since your so good I will bring my Blazer down there and let you do mine. LOL. Let us know when it's back on the road.

 

Hahaha don't worry I keep myself busy lol. I'm tellin ya, I left the bolts to soak in penetrating oil for about 2 days before we got at em! I think that's what did the trick. You can see the can of the stuff sitting in the last picture.

 

that makes two of us (i'm sure there are a lot more too!)

and mc70sfan, i soaked a truck for a week (well, for the work week anyways), and i still had to torch them off. put this win in the "so damn lucky" catagory.

did you end up changing the shakles while you were in there? (you were asking "what this other part was" the other day)

 

PB Blaster works wonders.. I'm still in shock he didn't need heat to get them off. The way my luck runs I'm gonna need 2 cans of PB Blaster, a cutting torch and a BF sledgehammer to get mine off. LOL

 

Hahaha I guess I am very lucky! The previous owner of my Jimmy (I had it for about a year and a half now) was my Grandpa and he washed and rinsed it pretty often during the winter to get the salt off ever since he bought it brand new off the lot. My truck has a pretty clean undercarriage. Although that still didn't help the body a whole lot, but I've seen worse. But the bondo repairs suffice I guess lol. This spring repair was still a big PITA!! We only had to cut 1 thing, and that was the inner u-bolt. BUT we could've gotten away without cutting it, since I was turning the wrench for quite a while and assumed the thread broke. We cut it out, and after I managed to get the stuck wrench socket off of it, I saw that the bolt was just a few turns away from coming off. LOL
3 of the u-bolt nuts snapped off from the leverage with the long wrench we used since they were rusted in that badly, and the last one on there that would've come off fine ended up getting cut off. go figure.

I kept the original shackle too.

So here are some pictures:

Everything put back together...





My biggest complaint is that the new u-bolts are a bit longer than the old ones. Not a big deal I guess.

And just an overall shot post-repair.



I really like this truck.

Oh and I took it for a quick spin around the block today and it felt fine, but that was only about a 1/2 mile drive not exceeding 30 mph lol. But I don't see why it shouldn't hold up.