BlazingTrails said:
Just jack it up under the rear differential. then put your jack stands under the Lower control arm mounts on the body, remove the rear wheels and let the axle down. obviously you will have to remove the panhard bar from the axle, remove the shocks, and upper control arms. I can do the rear swap in about 1 hour. so it is not that bad. Good luck buddy
Got the passenger rear done tonight, started about 8:40 PM (pulling up onto concrete slab in front of the lower garage at my parents house, where I do all my work) and pulled it over to it's temporary home on the other side of the driveway at 9:44 PM.
I had a few issues that slowed me down, my air compressor has a leak in the line between the compressor and tank so it's slow to build up pressure above about 80 PSI so refilling takes a while, when I was using the impact to remove the lug nuts, one was WAY over tightened and I had to wait for the tank pressure to reach 120 PSI (most come off with the tank pressure in the 80-100 PSI range) and I disconnected the upper control arm at the axle and that nut did NOT want to move, I HAD to use the impact to get it out because the 1/2" drive ratchet wouldn't budge it, which took several "recharges" of the compressor tank to accomplish, but aside from the shock bolts that was the only other bolt I removed, once that was loose and the shock was out I used the pry bar to pop the bottom of the spring off the axle and out came the old, I also busted a finger pulling out the old bump stop (because I didn't realize how they where held in) got the new bump stop in, reattached the upper control arm, sat the spring on the axle and threaded the top bolt for the new belltech shock into place and slowly jacked the axle up till the bottom of the shock lined up to feed it's bolt thru, at this moment the spring also fully seated with a loud ping and I proceeded to tighten everything back down.
if the weather is good then I'm going to do the driverside tomorrow night and I'm going to try just using the pry bar to pop the spring after dropping the shock without disconnecting the upper control arm (that was easily a 1/3rd of my time spent dealing with it).
I have all new ball joints coming in the next day or so and will be installing them (decided to just do new lower arms up front because of the mileage) and put in an order over at TBSSowners for the modified upper arms to correct camber, once I get all the parts in then I can get it in for an alignment and start driving it again.
Also once I get the last spring in I need to get it on some level ground and take some measurements, I'm concerned I may have gone to far with the front for what is suggested for 4wd vehicles, I'll have to check, I may need to pull them apart again and add a spacer.