This is another repair for the Ford Truck archives.

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So this passed week I had to take my 1995 Ford F150 XL 8 ft. bed in for PA vehicle inspection. To my knowledge, my vehicle was going to pass with flying colors and I would be good for another year. Unfortunately, that rusty Ford frame caught up with me. I had a crack in the frame near the steering box and my leaf spring hangers were just about rotted through. I paid to have the crack repair, but saved the hanger for myself.



Yup that's a nasty one! What the picture doesn't show was the huge flakes of rust in between the hanger arms and between the rivets.

So I got to work. First tricky part was jacking up the truck. In order to unbolt the leaf spring you must let the leaf spring droop until all the tension is out of it. Unfortunately, my jack doesn't go that high and I don't own a high lift jack or anything close. (My truck is 2WD and no lift, just in case you were wondering). My jack stands were too short as well. Easy fix. I cut 4, 12 inch lengths out of 6x6 lumber to use as stacking blocks and placed the jack stand on top. Like so...



This gave me just the right height to let the tension out of the leaf spring and keep me enough height for easy working under and around the wheel well.

Note: Using normal jacking methods, I removed the wheel first. Otherwise I would have to have stacked another layer of 6x6s to get the height need to remove the wheel and let the suspension droop at the same time.

Moving forward. I don't own an air chissle, but I did have an angle grinder. Nice thing about an angle grinder is they are cheap, run of electricity, and don't require a large air compressor in order to run them continuously. So I broke out the angle grinder, decked myself out in safety gear, and started grinding.

After about 3 minutes of grinding, the head of the rivet should be completely gone. All that will be left is a ring in the steel showing where the rivet is inserted. Take a some kind of steel bar like a concrete forming pin or re-bar and place it over the rivet. Then wack it with a hammer. Don't get discouraged if the first wack or two doesn't punch it out. Most of the rivets took 10 good wacks. (the first time a removed rivets from a Ford I used an old 1/2 drill bit and hammer to punch it through) Once you punch the rivet out is should look like this:



Repeat this process until all the rivets are removed. Once the last rivet is punched through the hanger (which is still attached to the leaf spring) it will just pivot down until the weight of the leaf spring comes to rest. I placed a jack stand under the leaf spring so that once the las rivot was punched out the leaf spring only dropped about a 1/2 inch.

At this time you can unbolt the hanger from the leaf.



Here's a comparison between the old and new hanger:



Shiny!!! I purchased this hanger from Raybucks online. The price was good and the shipping was quick. The hanger comes with a new leaf spring bushing, bolts, and nuts with nylon anti-vibration inserts. Over all a great product.

But before I slapped that baby on there, I had to treat for rust. Using an 80 grit abrasive sanding wheel mounted on my angle grinder, I cleaned the entire area of loose rust and smoothed the steel out. Next I applied my favorite rust inhibitor, Ospho, to the cleaned area. Ospho changes iron oxide (rust) to iron phosphate. This makes the metal free of rust and paintable.

So you guessed it, the next step is to paint the treated area with VHT Chassis Epoxy paint.



Even if the hype behind the durability of the isn't true, the paint does dry fast.

Now we are ready to mount the hanger, which is pretty straight foward. Place your bolts through the existing rivet holes and tighten them down.

Next part is to get the leaf spring attached to the hanger. This part was tricky. So if you have ever looked at the entire leaf spring suspension on a truck, you will notice that the two rear leaf spring hangers also have shackles. These shackles make mounting the leaf spring back into the hanger a PITA. That is until you figure out how to do it.

My trick to this process it to place a block of wood between the shackle the the back bumper. This keeps the shackle from pivoting, which will allow the leaf spring to move in a consistent radius. Having a consistent radius makes jacking the leaf spring up into the hanger a breeze. If the shackle is allowed to move, then the holes in the hanger and the leaf spring become very hard to line up.

So after some light taps with a hammer, the bolt holes lined up and the hanger and leaf came together:



This is a great project for the DIYer and takes around 2 hours to complete. After reading this thread it should be even shorter for you.

If you are not a fan of reading or some of these steps seemed vague, here is a video from my YouTube channel detailing the entire process.

Here's the link:

 

Great post! Thanks for sharing!

I am surprised that you had the infamous steering box frame crack on a 2wd truck. I thought that only the 4wd trucks were affected. Are you running stock tires?

 

Hey Warren!

I was too. I had never heard of a Ford frame cracking there. Then I looked it up online and found that it was a little more common then I thought. I do take my truck off road and drive it over anthing I think it will clear. With in reason of course. I'm running 31x10.5", which are not far from the stock size. Does that cause the cracking?