Today was the day I finally found the time to replace those rusty hangers on my 94 F150. I bought a pair of hangers and shackles, along with the hardware, on ebay. I read and re-read the posts here about doing the job, and with that info fresh in my mind, it turned out to be not too bad of a job.
I did one side at a time, jacking it up until the rear wheel was just barely touching the ground, then I loosened the bolt holding the spring to the shackle. After that bolt was loose, I was able to pound it through the shackle enough to cut the head off the bolt with my reciprocating saw. That got the spring out of the way so I was able to cut the heads off the rivets, again with the reciprocating saw. I don't have a torch. After the rivets were cut, I pried the old rusty hanger off, with the shackle still attached. Since I was replacing the shackle and the hanger, I didn't have to mess with trying to seperate them. Once the old stuff was off, it was pretty easy to put the new stuff on. Then I did the same thing to the other side. One thing I found odd that on the drivers side, the hanger had 2 rivets, and 2 bolts. No idea why.
I felt so good that this nasty job was done that I washed the truck, whether it needed it or not.

 

good to hear it went well, im tackling that same job over the long weekend. how hard was it to get the bolts out of the spring eyes?

 

I'm glad to hear it went well. I have the parts to do this to mine. I was going to do it a while back, but never got around to it. I just got the hardware to mount the hangers.

When you say you did each side separately, do you mean that you left one tire on the ground while doing the other side?

I figure this would cause the rear axle to tilt off level and make it hard to put the spring, shackle and hanger back together.

I was going to remove both wheels, lower shock bolts, and sway bar end links. Then I was going to just lower the rear axle down while the rear frame is supported by jack stands.

That is one reason I haven't done it yet. I just got new larger heavy duty jack stands that are actually long enough to do this. All I had before was just the little car jack stands that are way too short.

I too am interested in finding out how hard it was to remove the bolts from the spring eyes. Also, how many blades did you go through on the saw? Was the saw a pain to use? I think I am going to drill mine with an air drill.

 

I had some trouble finding jack stands large enough, ended up buying some great big heavy ones from Harbor Freight. I did only jack up one side of the truck at a time, just enough to take the weight off of the spring. I don't think it's necessary to remove all that other stuff. Getting the bolt out of the spring eye wasn't at all hard, once I decided to cut the head off of the bolt. The head is on the frame side of the spring, and there isn't enough room between the spring and the frame to take the bolt out, so cutting off the head made it so I could pull it out the other way. The saw was easy to use, and I only used one blade. A good, metal cutting blade cut right through the bolt and I also used it on the rivet heads. I tried drilling the heads off of the rivets first, but it was tough to get the drill in a good position to do the upper ones.