weekend work

From: werlax@hotmail.com
Date: Sun Aug 01 2004 - 20:44:24 EDT


My first weekend working on the truck. It was a lengthy weekend. I was
able to get in my new Edelbrock IAS shocks, Powerslot slotted rotors, Hawk
brake pads, and Moog upper ball joints. Grinding out the rivets for the
upper joints wasn't bad... once I got there. I had a heck of a time getting
the old rotor off the hub. A 5-lb sledge ended up being the trick. ;) I
made sure to add some anti-seize to the hub face before putting the new
rotors on. The shocks were going well until the lower bolt broke off.
Luckily it wasn't hard to get out. Of course, it was late on Saturday so no
place was open. The only other problem I had was when putting in the rear
shocks. The upper bolts are not situated in a leverage-friendly position.
I couldn't get one loose even with a breaker bar. I ended up spending a
half hour grinding the bolt and nut down. Luckily that bolt just passes
through the shock bushing so I could tap it out. I was fortunate that it
wasn't the driver side shock I was having problems with since I found out
that for some reason the placement of the upper bolt is different than the
passenger side and it was a huge pain to get both hands in there to prevent
the one side from spinning. The only question I have from the weekend is
something I noticed near the end of the project today. When removing one of
the lug nuts on the rear I found out that the last person to put my tires on
had stripped the bolt. They had ground down the tip of the bolt and hugely
cross-threaded the nut getting it back on. I'll have to replace this at
some point since I only have 5 of the 6 nuts on right now. What's the
cheapest way to fix this? It's so chewed up it'll probably need a new bolt.
Good weekend despite the small issues.
The next few weekends will be much harder... headers, manifolds, valve
covers.. looking forward to it. :)
Mark



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