As I mentioned in an earlier post, I replaced the radius arm bushings on my '68 F-250. I want to share something I learned. I had read a couple of how-to descriptions, one of them from FTE. Some advised unbolting the springs and some didn't so I decided to try it both ways.

One side at a time, I got the truck up on stands, got the tire off and unbolted the shock at the bottom end. With a jack under the I-beam I removed the bushing nut and removed the jack. I then attached a ratchet strap to the chassis and the bottom of the spring and pulled the arm free of the bracket.

Slap wore out bushings:


Pretty basic stuff and reassembly was simple. I had to use another ratchet strap to pull the bushing end of the arm into alignment before I released the tension on the first strap, so some strong-arming is required. No surprise there.

Here's where the question of unbolting the springs comes in: the new bushings were a tight fit on the shaft of the arm. On the side I left the spring bolted to the chassis all I had to do was loosen the ratchet strap and the spring pushed the arm back into place.

On the other side I had unbolted the spring up top thinking it would make the radius arm easier to pull out of the bracket. It wasn't any easier. Plus I had to use another strap to pull the arm back into the bracket and wrestle the spring back into place.

I suppose I could have unbolted the swing arms at their pivot points on the chassis, but I was trying to keep it simple.

One guy had mentioned torque ratings for tightening the retainer nuts. I just wrenched them down until I found the cotter pin holes and called it good.

Lesson learned. I'm passing it along to anyone who might need it.

 

When I installed the '77 F100 disc brake front suspension in my truck, I installed Energy Suspension polyurethane radius arm bushings. The bushings were so stiff I couldn't get the stud end of the radius arms pulled back enough to get the nuts started on the threads.

I hooked one end of a come-along to the U-shaped portion on the '77 radius arms and the other end to the transmission crossmember. The come-along easily pulled the arms back where I could get the nuts started on them.

 

I was a minute or two away from using a come-along.

 

GOOD INFO GUYS , i'll be doing this in the near future , with the Urethane bushings .

 

I used prothane brand poly bushings. Did the pivots and radius arms on the same day iirc. With the beams loose everything went pretty slick.

On the torque, I first went til I thought was good. Which was somewhere around 40lbs. As much as they were squishing I couldn't imagine they would ever get to the 100lb spec. But later on after a few months I got under there and torqued them down more. The bushings aren't what held the torque, rather the nut bottomed on the radius arm. I suppose maybe that's how it was designed to work.

Either way, it worked fine.