For two months my truck has been hanging in the left rear and because of the snow packed in my driveway all winter I put it off until 3 days ago, but I decided to finally look at it and found the carnage....a rusted & broken shackle. Because of this I've been babying my truck and I took a 140mile trip to pick up some extremely cheap parts from a guy off craigslist on which I turned 18mpg without cruise control and with 5 people in the truck hauling some new parts, I bought a new bumper,bedliner, extra head light assembly & various suspension parts and I still turned out an amazing gas mileage number. I'm completely floored it only took $25 of gas to go that far and I even juiced it a little a few times to get going up certain hills.

Now for the shackle...its $32 for a new one, do I just cut the ends of the bolts off the old one and slap the new one on? I assume the rusted ones aren't coming off without a fight....

 

You'll need new leaf spring bushings and all bolts obviously.The shackles hopefully came with the lower bushing.

 

yes, remove old bolts any way possible - torch, saw, cutoff wheel, etc.

are the old shackles riveted on. do the new ones have bolt on shackle plates?

 

you had ***** driving that thing with only one hanger... props!

 

lol thanks! but the real props goes to my gf, she did a partial figure 8 with it on dry blacktop last week because she was too lazy to turn around in someones driveway so she just goosed it to my dismay!. I'm honestly suprised the differential is still under the truck! considering its been leaning to that side for the last 2 months and I haven't been exactly nice to the truck either. I figured it was just a weak leaf spring and I'd take care of it come spring time...no pun intended.

I looked on Auto Zones website and the new shackle comes with new bolts for $32 all together.

So pretty much I only use the truck now if I have to until I can afford that shackle. I went on that 140 mile trip with it because there was some good craigslist deals, a guy sold me a decent bumper, new passengers side head light assembly, 4 front link bars & bed liner everything all for $40 total, I couldn't pass that up!. Babied it all the way there and back, and gotta say I'm suprised at how much fuel economy I got.