The Ramper

  The rear suspension played me, made me think this suspension thing wouldn’t be so bad.   The rear was relatively rust free and didn’t fight me much, no seized bolts, no rusted-on nuts… The front suspension settled in for a siege. Seized Nuts! There’s a saying, any one-day project is one broken bolt from a three-day slog, in my case it was seized nuts (That’s what she said, yeah, I know, please forgive me).   I spent more than three solid hours wrangling the nuts off the shock shafts.   You know how this goes, you manage two or so turns of the nut before it seizes, and no amount of WD-40 could have prevented.   You round off the ridiculously inadequate little flats on the top of the shaft, now you can’t stop the shaft from turning, and you run through your favorite four-letter words.   You know, basic wrenching. I had to bring some big artillery to the fight, but I eventually won! Break out the vice-grips to lock down the shaft and used up all my grip ...

With the drivetrain in pieces in the garage, removing and refreshing the rear suspension is obvious. But first… I removed the emergency brake cables, partly because they were (slightly) in the way but mostly because they were rusty, can’t have that! So, I removed the brake lines, they were rusty, and neglecting the brakes is plain stupid. The heater ducts and fan housing were right there, easy to remove and refresh, so out they came too. The fuel line was rusty… Next, I disassembled the rear brakes, removing the axles, backing plates and boxing-up all the widgets, springs and doohickies that make drum braking happen.  I removed the springs and the A-arms to lighten the load I would have to drag from under The Ramper. THEN, I dropped the rear suspension. Something cool - factory chalk marks. (I have no idea what they mean though.) Inspection My theory is that the 55K miles on the ticker may be accurate; some evidence to back the claim. Original shocks: The Ramper ...