When we started the front, we got the swaybar off and 3 of the 4 cam eccentric bolts off the lower control arms and hit a major snag. All of the cam bolts were stuck in but we were able to break them loose with a breaker bar and then tap them out. The fourth was not budging.
We hit it with a hammer...
Then we hit it with a bigger hammer...
Then we put the breaker bar on the florr jack and cranked it up until it almost broke and hit with the big hammer at the same time...
Then I went to the shed and got the maul out and we hit it with that for a while. The maul is basically a 5-10 pound sledge but it wouldn't budge. I was watching the LCA mount bending backwards and finally gave up and got out the cutting wheel. At first I couldn't cut all the way through with a 4" disc so I did what I could and we finally gave up after about 4 hours of working on the same bolt. We popped the other 3 back in and puled it out into the driveway and quit for the night.
Sunday morning I got up and went to Harbor Freight and got some 4.5" cutting wheels and went back over to Dad's and got back in to it. Here's some pics of how it looked when I got there to show you the amount of room I had to work in...
When I hit it with the bigger disc it gave within 10 minutes. I had to grind it back a little and finally got the arm to drop. There weren't many pics of all of this as naturally I was kind of preoccupied. Now that I had everything loose it was time to start bolting stuff up. I would worry about the ruined bolt and bushing later.
First the crossmember was cut out and thrown to the side. No turning back now...
A pic of eveything finally hanging...
Next we put the new (to me) front diff with the 5.29's in it in. Sorry no pics, this bastard weighed 88 pounds.
Then I stared in on the CV's. After breaking the bolts loose one at a time with a torch and a big breaker bar on the diff, I went to take the hubs apart and install the new CV halfshafts. Here's a pic of the drivers side about to go in...
I stopped after installing the driver's side CV for the night and got back in to it tonight after work. The second one went so well I took more pics.
Here's the unbolted CV getting ready to be replaced...
Taking the hubs apart was pretty straight forward but the cone washers took some figuring. Here's the routine me and subliminaltrips worked out that got them out with the least amount of headache...
First remove the nuts and washers and spray some PB Blaster all over them...
Then some heat concentrated on the cone washer and the base...
Then screw a nut on halfway...
Then put the socket and an extension on and rap about 30 times with a hammer just hard enough to break the washer loose...
Here's one of the snap ring and washer sorry for the blur...
And everything off and the CV out.
And a nice rebuilt CV on the new diff...
And the drivers side too... Notice the destroyed lower ball joint I have to also buy now from removing the LCA...
And a pic of the bushing that gave me so much headache that I have a replacement on order for. $50 for the bushing and $10 for the bolt for oem.
