New pickup
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New pickup
Hey guys so I have my 79 f150 SB and the other day I traded my 99 neon with 136000 miles for a 97 f250 HD XLT 2wd extended cab long box. 89000 original miles interior is mint body is mint except rear wheel wells are rusting a bit. I thought it was a good deal. Now for the bad I went to turn left and I heard a loud clunk and what can only be described as the tire lying down then some grinding growling popping until I got the wheel straight. Looked at driver's side wheel well and the bracket for the radius arm is gone and the arm is just flailing around. Passenger side is still there but is pretty much gone too. I ordered new brackets from Moog and upper and lower ball joints and inner and outer tie rods. Anything I should expect to run into?
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You traded a Neon with 136k for this '97 with low miles? I'd call you a lucky s.o.b. Even if you have to rebuild the entire front end, the truck is built 100x better than a Neon. Depending on the year if the Neon, you might have just prevented yourself from facing an inevitable blown head gasket by trading it.
I will warn you that those old suspension & steering parts will not want to come off easily.....
I will warn you that those old suspension & steering parts will not want to come off easily.....
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Well I got the radius arm brackets in the mail and I went to oriellys and picked new radius arm bushings. Im going out to the shop to try and get those in there, from what I've read on other threads it's a 1/1/8 nut so I picked up a impact socket for that as well.
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Apparently lol I felt like I was the only one who had one that was still running lol but I did the driver side radius arm bracket and bushings tonight. Tomorrow I'm starting on passage side but I turned wheel all the way left and no clunk moved it back towards straight and there's that clunk again...Hoping that my ball joints and tie rods will fix it
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Okay so I didn't garage time today but have been researching that clunk on sharp left turns at low speed and have read multiple places about the two vertical fender bolts being a little loose will cause this issue I'm going to run out quick and try that ( in pajamas ) lol anyone else have this issue or heard of it.
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Ya that didn't work lol worth a try, like I said now after replacing driver's side radius arm bracket and bushings it doesn't clunk on full left lock anymore rather it now clunks when I get the wheels almost straight turning from the left so my bet is ball joints
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Just did mine on my '95 F150. I rigged up my own bushings to press them out/in. Pretty easy job.
Another vote for "you got the best of the trade"............ But, you'll hate the fuel mileage difference!!!!!
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