...and it kicked my butt! The weather (at only 95 and occasional clouds and winds) made working in the concrete driveway with only a patio umbrella moved around for shade tolerable, it could have been a lot worse.

The TTB front end is goofier than and football bat. Seems everything is in a bind at all times. I used a hammer, two sites of tapered drifts, a big chisel (to get the pivot bushing bolts to go back through both sides of their brackets) and a strap come-along to get all of the bolts fully inserted. This was with the front of the truck held up by two jack stands and the near constant use of a floor jack. Now that I did it I could do it in about half the time.

Removing most of the old rubber was not terribly difficult after I cut a short piece of pipe to push it into using an 8" C-clamp to provide pressure and a propane torch to heat the spring to release the rubber. A sawsall cutting the shell most of the way through from the inside of the shell, just into the gap between the flat part of the spring and the end of the spring loop, allowed a chisel to remove the shell with about 5 minutes of hammer swinging, chasing of the chisel and lots of cussing. I had to drill out the rubber from the pivot bushings as there simply was not enough room to get the C-clamp tools in place. The instructions were clear that most installations were to re-use the pivot bushing's metal shell and to not damage them. My particular part number did not require the re-use of the shells, but I did anyway. Not sure if my short cut will come back to haunt me, but that is what I did. The other 6 shells (there are two on the front shackles) were removed and no metal shell were reinstalled, per the instructions.

The 8 hours work gave me a more composed ride over smallish bumps but by no means would I say it smoothened the ride. After I replace the rear bushings I'll get some new shocks now that the suspension isn't rattling around. The former negative camber now appears near vertical. The front bump stops now sit about 1-3/4" off the axle, an improvement of about 3/4". The small rubber bushings at the top of the front shackles were the most abused and came out in pieces. The rest of the original rubber bushings were noticeably permanently deformed from the weight and pounding of the truck. The steering wheel is slightly cocked to the right and the truck pulls slightly to the left and I may have it aligned in the future.

I tightened the 8 bolts until they just started to make metal to metal contact and stopped. I will bounce the front end to-from work (8 miles each way, all neighborhood streets) to let everything settle where it wants to be and tightened them to a full torque Wednesday (two days after the replacement).

 

I have mine fully prepped and ready for the Bushings...

Where did you get your Bushings at?

All the ones I've found so far have Collars around the outer rubber sections...

 

Mine are EnergySuspension, supposedly the black are not as prone to squeaking as the red ones. The bushings on the leaf springs had integral collars, but the pivot bushings do have the collar you describe.