Oh boy... lol. Today I was driving my 95 f150 4x4 and hit a bump and long story short the stud that you put the bushings on the radius arm totally sheared off. I have a few questions.
I bought the truck with a lift, but I am not sure how much it is lifted... how do I measure that? I honestly do not know anything about lifts, will I have to get a different type of radius arm?
Is there anything else I should check or replace while I have everything off?
Any other tips on the job?

 

Is it a stock radius arm with drop brackets or do you have extended radius arms? A picture is worth a 1,000 words. The Superlift kit on my Bronco uses the same front pivot brackets with two sets of bolt holes for both lifts (4” / 6”) of lift.

I have seen where the bottom half of the bushing was gone and it had caused the arm to wear on the bracket. The bracket hole was egged out and the “stud” part of the arm was half its original thickness. It had to be making noise over bumps.

 

These are some photos of the damage, need anymore to tell?

 

In that top picture, it looks like the stock radius arm with a drop bracket.

 

Okay, that simpifies things! Anything else I should check out while I have everything off? Is there a good way to check shock absorbers other than just pushing in and out and making sure its smooth and has resistance? Thank so much for the help!

 

Does the truck take a while to settle after a bump? I would replace the radius arm bushing on the passenger side.

 

That break has been forming for a long time. Is that because of the lift, should other parts be changed as well when the truck was modified?

 

I lifted my Bronco about 20 years ago and back then lift kits included pivot drop brackets and either radius arm drop brackets reusing the OEM radius arms or extended arms and then you relocated the OEM bracket farther back on the frame. For the rear you had the option of blocks, add a leaf or new springs. You also got new nuts and bolts. You would have to get longer brake hoses.

My guess is that there was something wrong with the bushing that was ignored. Just because the front of the bushing looks ok doesn’t mean the part going through the bracket is still intact. Hard to tell on the phone but the center is a fresh break while the bottom and top(?) are rusty. It had to be banging around going over bumps Indicating something was wrong.

 

Hello, thanks a lot myfordtruck and sloopdog1. I got a late start last night so I just got thr old radius arm off. Everything else looks pretty good, all I have to do is mov the shock absorber bracket to the new one and reinstall. It has been broken for a while and it just snapped off. I just went ahead and got a new arm for the other side as well and all new bushings so I will check the otherside of cracks because I am curious if it was a bad bushing or just stress from the lift. We shall see

 

Would you mind posting some pix of the work you are doing? Might be beneficial to others some day.

 

How should I go about torquing the two bolts that hold the radius arm to the I beam? Should I put loctite or nevercease? I have read different specs from 180-300, what should I do?

 

And yeah, Ill takr some pics and post when done

 

Not near my repair manual to check the torque specs. I use anti-seize on them.

Make sure the hole in the bracket isn’t egged out where the arm passes through.

 

Here are some pics


























All in all it is a very simple procedure
1- Jack from frame components, you will be needing to move axle around a little bit. I had to move the jacks around a little till I found the perfect spot, make sure you do this safely.
2- remove wheel
3- remove shock absorber, just one nut on top and bolt on bottom, will have to wiggle around a bit to get out.
4- remove coil spring, there is a 1 1-8 nut at the bottom of the spring, I used extentions going all the way from the nut to the top, slowly let axle down and took top retainer out.
6- remove top stud that holds radius arm to I beam (its a booger, I snapped a breaker bar...) if its rusted good i used a 1 1/8" open end wrench with about a 5 foot cheater pipe and some heat, wasnt easy but got the job done, same procedure on the same bolt on the bottom side of the I beam
7- take nut holding end of radius arm to bracket (where the bushings are)
8- pull radius arm out, you will need to move axle a bit I used a tow strap
9- chase all threads
10- move shock absorber bracket to new radius arm (i cleaned it up and painted it)
11- reassemble everything with the new bushings
It will be a lot of moving stuff around and just lining things up. This is just the way I did it, who knows if I did it correctly haha, but everything seems to be in order and it drives well.
Don't be intmitated by this job if you don't have much experience, if I can do it you can. Just make sure to torque everything down and be careful.

 

Pics didn't come up.

Glad you got it back together and it's working!