Help! Replacing leaf springs

Glad to see you got it all back together. It's the unforeseen issues like that which make for long weekends!

 

welcome to the world of springs....

 

Im gonna try to build me a spring pack from my old ones 4wd

I just didnt feel comfortable trying to build a leaf spring pack.

I thought there were shackles front and rear..lol :/

 

No worries, it's def. a learning process & sometimes a first class bitch when bolts freeze/seize , but i'm sure you learned a ton...good job adapting/overcoming the issues that plagued your install..

 

Man, that reminds me of when I did mine several years ago. Sawsall, grinder, hacksaw, and torch, profanity, and more profanity, pb blaster, vise grips, cold chisel, punch, and finally beer. I used geaseable shackles with wheeler's 5 leafs. Had the same break line issue. All this made it easy for Toyota when they replaced the frame the next year.

Yours looks great.

 

I made a thread a few weeks ago about leafs. My advice is to buy new everything before you start and just cut it all. Life is better that way.

 

It's geographics really, here in east county it's dry climate, I'm using my original hardware, my Ubolts have been on & off at least 15 times

 

Yup yup yup agree 100%. I thought abouy geyying new bolts after reading brents thread buy didnt know what size and didnt wanna go to the dealer. And never thought the shackles would give ttouble.

 

Yup, that's why I bought brand new parts for everything. I honestly probably wouldn't have bought shackles if I had known my OEM ones would come off so easily, but oh well.

I knew the fronts would have to be replaced after having worked on other parts of the truck...

 

My front susoension came off easy. When i bought the truck you could eat off the frame super clean hardly any rust!

Driver shackle was ez pass. Side took at least 1.5hrs

 

Front suspension wasn't seized, but the sway bar was a huge pain as well as the step bars I took off.

Shackles came off with not much force, main eye bolts didn't budge. Everything else was pretty simple.

 

Should I have used the toyota torque specs to tighten the fwd leaf spring bolts? I think it was 116# ftlbs. I used grade 8 hardware bolts vs toyota bolts.

1 side was fine the other seemed to sorta suck in the bushing from the leaf, seemed too tight?

I'll try to get pix..

 

Here ya go. Replied to your pm but figured I'd post it in here since you tend to miss things that I post

Found the document from my 03 Tacoma FSM....

 

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that is having a hell of a time removing my sway bar...