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  1. #1
    CavMan MY FYN 79's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    The other Chi town
    Posts
    357

    F-150 broken radius rod- How bad did I just screw myself?

    Was gonna help out my dad with his 93 F-150 4x4. Ironhorse 5 speed. Its a lower mile truck that he bought brand new and its been sitting upnorth at his place for years with totally destroyed radius arm bushings. He plans to put a snowplow on it for cleaning all the families driveways up there, but any ways.

    His place is about 175 miles from me so I did a ton of research online and brought all the tools I figured I would need. Sawzall, grinder, air chisel, impact gun, torches etc. Made sure the parts store in town had everything in stock and planned to change the radius arm brackets and bushings.

    What I did next is 100% my fault and if I had to do it over obviously I would do it different, but, with some heat and a big bar on a wrench I got the radius arm nut moving on the passenger side. I was rocking it back and forth tightening and loosening and I ended up overdoing it and broke the damn nut off. Rusty Jones personally worked his magic on this truck so you can imagine what it looks like underneath. If I pick up a different radius arm for the passenger side, what kind of surprises am I gonna run into changing it? Looks like a huge bolt and nut run through the radius arm bracket and "front axle" and the top of this nut is inside the coil spring. Guessing I need to pull the shock and spring and that big bolt to remove the radius arm? Is that big bolt gonna come loose?

    On the other side I just took my grinder and made the radius arm nut paper thin in one spot and was able to work the nut back and forth.. and eventually off with the impact. Knocked all the rivets off the brackets so hopefully next time as long as changing that radius arm isn't a total nightmare the project shouldn't be too bad.

    The hindsight thing is that I should have sacrificed the nut on both sides to save the arm, but obviously the plan at first was to get the truck going again that day. I really didn't think the threaded part of the arm would snap off though. Damn.

    Any thoughts besides I shouldn't have broke it off?
    -----------------------------------------------------
    JLP
    79 Monte
    406/2004R/Phord 9"

  2. #2
    CavMan MY FYN 79's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    The other Chi town
    Posts
    357
    Got it fixed.
    -----------------------------------------------------
    JLP
    79 Monte
    406/2004R/Phord 9"

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