John S's Journal

Just about done with the front end. With the exception of the sway bar and the brake calipers, it’s pretty much done. I thought I could find someone to press out the sway bar bushings in short order but no such luck. I miss those days when you had more options in town and could take something simple like a sway bar to a machine shop and they could pop the old out and the new in while you wait or within a couple hours at least. Nope. Not going to happen today. Shortage of skilled help these days and everyone is scrambling. I tried doing it in my vise but couldn’t budge them even with a little heat. Kinda how my day went. Had an appointment to get the EGR recall done on my RAM truck. Been waiting months. Got it there first thing this morning, caught a ride home and got a call 4 hours later to tell me that they didn’t have the parts that they needed to do the job. WTF?! Supposed to have had it ready by days end. Camping trip upcoming and no truck. Highly pissed Time for a drink.

Took a break and came back to the sway bar. I decided that I didn’t want to wait for a machine shop so I got out the hacksaw and inserted the blade and cut three slots around the inner bushing being careful to not cut to deep. Squeezed the end between two sockets and managed to force the old bush out at both ends. New bushes are chillin’ in the freezer overnight. Hopefully they will go in better than the old ones came out.

Saturday

Tackled the sway bar bushing installation today. Pulled them out of the freezer one at a time and proceeded to squeeze them in the vice with a socket. Applied a little heat to the bar and had to hammer on the vise handle repeatedly to get the bushings in all the way. Got a good work out.
I thought that the bolt up process would go quick but the SuperPro mount bushings proved to be a bit of a challenge getting the second bolt to line up with the hole in the frame. I had to go to a longer bolt on the second bolt on both sides in order to get the bolt started.

Brake calipers are all that’s left before I put the wheels on and get it back on the skates so that I can move it over and back further into the garage so I can maneuver the engine hoist around.

I want to clean up the rear wiring harness before I drop the engine and gearbox in. The cloth is pretty ratty in places so I ordered some Tesa tape to wrap it up from the engine bay connections down to the frame rail.