Recap of yesterday's "make my MPG great again" thrash. (Dailying the green one really hurts my wallet)
Took me three tries to get the passenger side spring in.
1st try went easy peasy. I was happy until I realized that the spring wasn't properly seated in the upper bucket in the frame.
2nd try got everything seated correctly, but my rented spring compressor was wedged tight and wouldn't come out. Like a DUMBASS, I decided to just stick a jack under the lower control arm, remove the knuckle and slowly lower the jack until the spring opened up enough to release the compressor. That part went fine, but while jacking the control arm back up to reinstall the knuckle, the control arm slipped off of the jack and the spring ejected itself. If you see the above pic of the control arm bushing, you'll see where the arm came down so fast and with so much force that it notched the crossmember and itself in one fell swoop. Luckily I wasn't in the line of fire, as the spring took flight and slammed into my steel car ramps against the wall. Wifey came running out screaming "are you ok? What happened?" I assured her that I was physically ok, but if I was to explain what happened, that I would have to kill her. She gave me the biggest stinkeye gaze I had ever seen from her, but she went back inside and left me alone.
3rd time was the charm, as they say...
More assembly later, I learned that the Energy Suspension kits come with 1" sway bar bushings for my truck, but my truck has the 1-1/8" sway bar... Fail.
Bottom side buttoned up, and I went back to engine reassembly. This was just hooking hoses up and routing wires back, installing engine accessories and all the other crap I pulled to get the intake gaskets/spider done. I changed the oil and fired it up to a massive misfire. Thinking that I crossed a spark plug wire somewhere, went and traced all those again. They were good, so mini freak out moment later and I was thinking that my spider install was wrong...
Called a mechanic buddy that was telling me how he had done several of these before, and he told me that it was likely just an injector that was slow to wake up, and that I should run it for a few minutes and see if it clears up.
Well it did, so back to happy for me...
Wheels on and torqued, fluids full, and underhood tool checked, time for a test drive.
If it wasn't for being so time consuming, every vehicle that I ever owned would be full poly bushed... This is my third one personally, and I have helped a few buddies do their's, and the control/road feel is just a night and day difference. Love it!
The motor mounts are transmitting a bit more vibration than I would have expected in this application, but I still like it...
I aborted trying to do the rear spring bushings at this time. With the holidays, I figured it would be better to get the truck back together to drive it, then in a few weeks after life calmed down I will pull it back in the garage and finish it...