Sunday, June 27, 2004  -  Well, I decided to take a vacation day on Friday to give me a three-day weekend to spend in the shop getting the rear suspension sandblasted, painted and reinstalled. Unfortunately, I didn't get as far as I'd have like, due to numerous delays and mechanical difficulties, but all in all I think it was a productive three days.

Knowing that I was going to have the marathon session, I went to the shop for a few hours after work on Wednesday night to get things ready. I wanted to have the spring packs completely disassembled and ready to sandblast, so I stayed until they were completely torn down.

I hit the shop at about 9AM on Friday morning, ready and rearing to go. I rolled the engine hoist with the Dana 60 on it outside into the driveway and spent a few minutes scraping grease and crud and then fired up the sandblaster. Man, I sure wish I had a larger sandblaster...and a large air compressor to handle it! As mentioned in a previous update, I only get about 5 minutes worth of blasting before I empty the tank, and then have to spend another 20 minutes sweeping up the sand, filtering it and refilling the hopper. It's a very time-consuming process. About mid-afternoon I had a major problem...the threads for the tank galled and it took me over an hour just to remove it. By the time I'd forced it off, I was missing the lower 1/3 of the threads in the cap and the upper 1/3 of the threads on the tank. I thought I was dead in the water until I could get another sandblaster on order. However, I decided to jury-rig it back together to get me through. Using my die-grinder, I removed the bad threads on the cap and tank, and when I was done the cap would still screw on, although it was only held on by about three threads. This is DEFINITELY NOT something I'd recommend to anyone, considering the potential for disaster if the remaining threads let go while the tank was under pressure. However, I was desperate and decided to give it a try. It DID get me through the remainder of the weekend, though I do still plan on ordering a replacement as soon as possible.

Anyway, by late afternoon I finally finished up sandblasting the rearend. I just rolled it a little farther down the driveway, wiped it down and gave it several coats of paint. I then headed back to the sandblaster and got started on the leaf springs. I worked on those until I ran out of daylight about 8:30 PM.

I made it back to the shop at about 10AM Saturday morning, ready to get cranking again. I fired up the sandblaster again, which seems to be holding OK for now, and got back to work on the spring leaves. However, after blasting for about an hour, it started spitting rain on me! Dammit! Since any moisture at all will really clog up the sandblaster, I rushed around getting everything back inside, to wait it out. I was hoping the gray clouds would just blow over and I could get back to work. In the meantime, I got the outer shells for the rear spring bushings removed (scroll down for details) and got the engine towers cleaned up and ready to sandblast. By this time it was almost 4PM and it was obvious that I was done with any outside sandblasting today. Last fall I'd constructed an indoor sandblast booth to allow me to work on the cab over the winter, but when summer arrived, I didn't figure I'd need it anymore, so I'd begun tearing it down. However, since I really needed to get some work done today, I reassembled it and got back to work sandblasting inside. Fig. 5 shows the extent of progress I was able to make sandblasting the leaves. However, I DID take a few minutes to also sandblast and paint the engine towers and got those installed (Fig. 6). I finally dragged myself home about 11PM, feeling like I'd been through the wringer!

Fig. 1  -  First thing Friday morning...ready to get busy!

Fig. 2  -  Plugging along with the sandblasting.

Fig. 3 - Almost done.

Fig. 4  -  The Dana 60 housing is finally finished!

Fig. 5  -  A shot of what I was able to accomplish today.

Fig. 6  -  The engine towers were blasted and attached. I had to get SOMETHING new mounted, since I wasn't going to get the rear suspension reinstalled as I'd hoped.

Removing the
Rear Spring Bushings

Normally when replacing the rear spring bushings, the replacements require you to reuse the outer shells. However, the PST polygraphite bushings I'll be installing don't need the shells, so they had to be removed, in addition to getting the rubber and inner shells out. Here's how I did it:

Fig. 7  -  I started out by drilling the rubber portion of the bushings out. After drilling most of the rubber out, I was able to drive them out with a BFH.

Fig. 8  -  Here's what the bushing and insert looked like once removed.

Fig. 9  -  Using the drill will probably cause some minor scoring of the outer shells, but they're coming anyway. If you're replacing with stock rubber bushings, you could use a brake hone to dress the shell.

Fig. 10  -  I ended up using the air chisel with a pointed tool to slowly chip and bend it enough to allow removal. Each bushing sleeve took about 20 minutes to get out.

Fig. 11  -  Normally, I'd have to recommend using a hydraulic press to remove these bushings/shells, since using the air chisel tended to add some dents to the spring & brackets. However, a couple minutes with the Dremel cleaned these right up.

Fig. 12  -  A shot of the freshly-sandblasted spring leaves, ready for painting.

Fig. 13  -  To minimize the chance of my clothes hangers interfering with the painting process, I inserted the hanger into the center hole and bent the end over like this.

Fig. 14  -  A shot of the flash rust that appeared after rinsing off the MetalReady.

Fig. 15 - Finally FINISHED!

Since I was up so late last night, I allowed myself to sleep in a little this morning. I made it to the shop about 11 and got right to work finishing up sandblasting the rear leaves. I FINALLY finished that up about 4PM this afternoon. I then had to spend an hour getting the driveway cleaned up and hosed down. I then set out the stepladder and laid a couple of 2x4's across it and the parts truck, to use as a paint rack. I then started brushing the springs down with MetalReady. This really is some good stuff! Even after sandblasting and wiping down, the MetalReady still bubbled up some debris left behind. The instructions say to to keep the metal wet for 10-15 minutes and then hose them down thoroughly  with water. Of course, if you don't dry it VERY quickly, flash rust will appear...which is exactly what happened (Fig. 14). They say to not worry about it, since POR-15 was actually designed to paint over the top of rust, but I went ahead and wiped them all down again with a damp rag to remove a majority of the flash rust, and also set up a squirrel-cage fan blowing on them to dry them as quickly as possible.

I dipped some POR-15 out of the quart can and into a small dish and resealed the can, and then got started applying it with some sponge brushes. The instructions say that 'a topcoat can be applied when tacky, or 3-5 hours'. However, it took me about an hour to paint all the leaves, and by the time I'd finished up with the last one, the first one was already tacky, so I got out the semi-flat Krylon and gave them all several coats of paint. Since I had some POR-15 left over in the dish, I grabbed the Flex-o-Matic brackets and gave each of them a coat and then later when they were tacky, they each also got several coats of Krylon.

Just as I was finishing up, it started to spit rain outside again. (I swear it's a conspiracy!) So...I started rushing around grabbing everything and hauling it back inside. It was a very interesting experience trying to find things in the shop to hang everything from so they could finish drying.

As mentioned earlier, when I planned this 3-day thrash session, I'd hoped to have the rear suspension complete reinstalled by this evening, but delays and problems put me way off schedule. At least now almost everything is ready to be installed!

So this is where things are at the moment. My suspension/steering pieces from PST are still arriving, though the kingpin sets are currently on back order. And to make matters worse, the front-end rebuild kit arrived on Saturday, but they sent the wrong pieces! Instead of the polygraphite rebuild kit, they shipped a standard kit with rubber bushings, so I'll be on the phone with them first thing in the morning to get this resolved. The correct polygraphite bushings for the rear springs are here though, so I can get started about any time getting the rear suspension reassembled and installed.

However, my shop-time might start to get a little spotty over the next month or so, since my wife and I are expecting a baby in about two weeks. The baby's due date is July 12th. Mary was planning on working up until a week before the due date, but this pregnancy has been rough on her, and she was forced to start her maternity leave last week. However, I should be able to get the rear suspension reassembled before the due date, so stay tuned!

Incidentally, last Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of the purchase of this truck!