Here a Shock, There a Shock & a Few Odds & Ends.

   I want to start out with the sway bar bushings. In yesterdays post I stated that I thought they were too small. Well to put them on the sway bar you have to slice one side and slide them over. This takes up the extra space I was seeing on the sides. As far as the gap on the bottom, the cross member has a raised area that the bracket will straddle, taking up the space I was seeing there. I think they will fit just fine!

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    I started the day putting the passenger side brakes together. I thought I had a picture of the other side but I do not. Not much to see really. But, please note the new rubber plugs in the adjustment holes ;)

    Then I installed the shocks. I thought this would be a simple task without any cursing ..... I was wrong. Although I got it done, it was not as easy as I had anticipated. Connecting and bolting up the lower shock mount turned out to be a challenge. The old shocks were shot  so I never had trouble bolting up the lower shock mount. The new shocks needed to be compressed to get the nut on the lower shock mount and that was a chore! They look good though!

    After installing the shocks I decided to finish up the clean up on the double nuts (?) for the cross member install. They look pretty good. I think I will go tomorrow and see if I can find all new grade 8 bolts, nuts, and washers for this as well as for the sway bar.

Then I painted this.....  I wont give up the project just yet, but this will be a bitter sweet experience! Can you guess what it goes to?

  

    While that was drying, I tackled the bumper brackets. There was a ton of the factory undercoating on these and that was a pain to remove. I am slowly learning that I should just leave that stuff on and degrease and repaint! I already started the removal so I had to see it through to the end. I am almost there but still have some work to do before painting them. I also took the bumper bracket bolts out of the vinegar. They had been soaking since I removed the bumper.

    I left myself enough time before dinner to finish mowing and came back out after dinner and cleaned up the garage for tomorrow.