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Hey guys. So this weekend my dad and I are going to tackle the rear springs in my '66. Got a set of Grab-A-Trak 4.5 leaf, standard eye springs. It looks like the original springs are on there now and I've tried breaking them loose with no luck but have been dousing them with WD for weeks and have my dad's air compressor on my side this time. Anything I should know ahead of time? I know someone said on the forum that I should cut the front spring bolts into 3 pieces but that's all I know so far. Unfortunately the only torch we have is a hand held propane haha but gonna give it a whirl. Any help is appreciated.
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I recently pulled my stock springs from my 66. I squirted all the bolt threads with WD-40 every day for a week, then used my cheap HF impact wrench to remove the bolts I could get the impact on. Half of the rear shackle bolts had to be removed with hand wrenches only. The may have been hammers involved. No bolts were cut.
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If there is an issue, it is usually where the front eye bolt passes through the bushing tube. If the bolt is rusted to the bushing tube, the only way to remove it is to cut the bolt between the spring and the car frame, on both sides of each spring. Easiest way I found, before I owned a sawzall, was to use a cutoff wheel to cut the eye off the spring, then cut the bushing off the tube, then cut the spring in the two aforementioned places. Obviolusly a new bolt is required at that point.
Use anti-seize between the front bolt and the steel ID of the bushing.
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dwalker2 wrote:
Unfortunately the only torch we have is a hand held propane haha but gonna give it a whirl. Any help is appreciated.
Not sure eaxctly what you were gonna use a torch for but that would be the last thing I would use to cut the bolts!! and by the last thing I mean chances are you wont have a car left! ASK ME HOW I KNOW!! at least my experience was from a junk car!!
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When I changed out my springs, one bolt had rusted to the inside of the front spring bushing. I had no sawzall at the time so I tried my cutoff wheel. There was not enough space for it to cut. A friend had a torch, so we cut it off with that. It worked, but my garage was really full of smoke. We also had a fire extinguisher right there just in case.
New spring bolted up just fine and I lubricated it with something I had handy. It's worked fine for about 15 years.
My advice. Use a sawsall with a new blade.
The rear shackles were a hassle because of space limitations, but nothing was frozen. I think I had to use an open ended wrench for one of them.
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Got the springs done after about 2 1/2 hours of straight cutting of the front spring bolt and bushing. A bit harder than I thought it would be but it rides great! Thanks for the help.
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