Suspension, Suspension and more Suspension

February has turned into a month of suspension work for me. I have 3 cars lined up to work on their front ends and they are all in a time crunch. The first one is a 94 GMC 3/4 ton pickup that needs inner and outer tie rods on both sides, a pitman arm, idler arm and idler arm bracket. The next one is a 90 Chevy S-10 truck that needs upper and lower ball joints on each side and last but not least is Ed the bug. I looked under it and the ball joints are shot already. I installed new ones about 2 years ago but I obviously got crap parts. We won't go there until I get a chance to work on it, then I will blog about my hatred for cheap parts. Anyways, I got the GMC done the last couple nights after work and it went really smoothly. I only ended up with one blood blister and the center link fell on my head but I said my new motto when things make me mad. "PARTY ON" I learned it from Cody Lundin (the guy from dual survival) and it seems to work. How can you not smile when you say those words. Try it and see if it works for you. I even have some guys at work saying it. It helps tremendously to lift your attitude. Here's the GMC. It has 180,000 miles on it and very few grease jobs so I guess it was due for some front end work. My truck has 174,000 miles and it's pretty tight up front so that should say something for greasing your suspension if you can.

 Here is the pile of parts that will go on it. I tried to talk him into buying Moog parts but He's a little on the cheap side. Hey, at least I got him to take back the valucraft parts (Autozones cheapest parts) and get the middle of the road stuff. I still am not a duralast fan but oh well, If they wear out in a year maybe I will charge him double the price for Moog parts to install them. I also installed a wiper motor he had bought awhile back and didn't get around to putting in.

I like to use Kroil on rusted bolts. It works awesome and you can see I put it on the tie rod clamps here. All the parts on this truck came apart really well with my rivet gun and the pitman arm puller I rented from Autozone. I have taken the pitman arm nuts off here also.

 Here's the idler arm. It was nice because he got a new idler arm bracket so everything was new that went back in.

Here's the new bracket for the idler arm. This one was cool because it had a hose attachment that went on so you could grease it really easy. These are usually a pain to grease because the Zerk is on top and hard to get to. I actually bought a special 90 degree grease fitting for my grease gun to grease mine in my truck. This hose is awesome and it didn't cost any more than the one without it.

 Here is the bracket and idler arm installed and you can see where I routed the hose. I actually ended up moving it after I put the truck back on the ground because it fit better on the forward side of the stabiliser bar when weight was on it.

 This shows the trick hose. You just hook your grease gun up the the hose and fill it up that way. Very Nice!

 Here's the new pitman arm. You need a good torque wrench to get it on because the torque is 194 foot pounds. You can see the center link without the tie rods hooked up to just after the pitman arm. That's the thing that fell on my head.

So here is the left side all buttoned up and greased.

and here is the right side ready to go. Now it just needs an alignment done and it should be ready for another 180,000 miles. well, it would of been good for that if he would of bought Moog parts like I tried to tell him, but he should get at least a year out of it. Maybe 2 if he greases it every oil change.

So now it's on to the S-10. That's tomorrows project. Hopefully it will go as smooth as this one went. If you walk by my garage and hear me hollering party on, you'll know it isn't going well. (I can think of worse things to yell).