Sunday, February 15, 2004  -  Just a quick update...not really enough for a full page, but I just felt like posting something, and this is all I had.

I spent a good portion of today getting the frame cleaned up. There was a lot of factory (?) undercoating that needed to be removed. I didn't have any chemicals handy, so just did it the old-fashioned way...I scraped it off. But man, if I ever have to do this again, you can definitely bet I'll come better equipped!

While doing some very close examining of the frame, I noticed some rust in the left shock/coil spring mount where it rests against the frame (Fig. 1). The rust had compromised the structural integrity of the mount, and I decided that rather than take a chance on it, it would get replaced. I've got several parts trucks, one of which will donate a good piece. To remove the old piece, I simply had to cut the factory rivets holding it to the frame, and will be bolting the good piece back onto the frame using Grade 8 bolts. I used the cut-off tool to cut an X into the rivet heads (Fig. 2) and then used an air chisel to remove the heads.

Next weekend I'll be putting the parts truck into the shop and removing the donor coil spring mount. The only bad part is that I still have to be able to remove the parts truck when I've stripped it, so I'll have to put the bad mount bad onto the frame and replace enough of the suspension to allow me to roll the truck back out of the shop and onto a trailer. However, once the parts truck is out of the shop and the new spring mount is mounted, the frame and suspension components are off to be powdercoated.

Fig. 1 - Here's a (large) comparison shot of the bad shock/coil spring mount with the good one.

Fig. 2 - cutting the rivets

Fig. 3 - A shot of the frame with the spring mount removed.