i have a 1994 supercab xl 3.0 4x4 ranger with 167,000 miles on her. she runs good, but the other day i was pulling out of the driveway and i heard a noise coming from the rear passenger side.

well i took her for a drive today and noticed the truck was sagging to the passenger side, i tried to look at the suspension but it was dark at the time. i plan on looking under her tomorrow to see what is broke......i am guessing for a broken leaf spring or sway bar....

where and what should i be looking for if a leaf spring is bad?

as of right now, i can see the leaf spring on the drivers side looks different then the leaf spring on the passenger side.

any ideas?

 

Look for a broken/missing leaf but also check where the spring pack mounts to the frame. It is possible for the shackle or the shackle hanger at the rear of the leaf spring to rust through and fail at high miles.

 

is it ok to be driving the truck like this?

can you buy leaf springs at autozone or only at dealers?

 

my advise exactly.




if youre going replace the hanger mounts, check out www.stengelbros.com. also check out ebay.

if youre going to replace your springs, might as well go with aftermarket springs... should be about the same price as FORD

 

oh, and some photos of the damage would help out a lot

 

ok guys, looks like i found the problem....the front leaf spring mount that attaches to the frame is gone.

pics:

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x...0-0018_IMG.jpg

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x...0-0017_IMG.jpg

 

There you go

 

Ouch - definitely shot. Gotta love the northeast, right? Looks real similar to mine:

http://www.therangerstation.com/foru...ead.php?t=4595

On the positive, replacing the passenger side hanger is 5x easier than replacing the drivers side hanger. Its not tough - but if ya need any advise just gimme a shout. As you can see from my thread, I replaced my hangers/mounts just last weekend.

 

ok, a couple ?'s

is this mount all i need or will i need something else also like a shackle?

does the leaf spring attach to the underside of the bed or not?

i found the mount on ebay but it looks like i need something else also?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1983-...spagenameZWDVW

i dont see these on the autozone or advance website

 

- shackles only attach to the rear end of the spring. no shackle up front

- connects to the frame only, not the bed

- thats the hanger. but youll need the bolts/washers/nuts, including the eyebolt (the main one, that the spring attaches to

check out that site i gave ya, or give them a call... they sell tons of these

 

I changed 3 of these on my 94. It's a pain. It would be well worth it to pull the bed and change the broken one and the rear mounts and shackles. I tried just changing the broken one and within a couple weeks another broke. BTW your ford dealer has them fo 20-22 bucks for each piece, if they price them high call other dealers because they are not the same price everywhere. I picked up grade 8 bolts at the hardware.
John

 

Jeez, that rust is amazing! I've lived in SoCal so long that I forgot what it's like. When I sold my '91 a couple years ago, it was dirty as hell, but no deep rust whatsoever, only very light surface rust on the undercarriage.

 

i ordered a new one ob ebay with all the bolts and nut included. hopefully it will come by next weekend.

thanks everyone.

 

Do them both now. I broke and fixed one on my 96 and the other broke 3 weeks later. When the first one went on my 97 I just did both at the same time.

 

ok guys, the one from ebay should be here by next weekend. i went by the ford dealer today and stopped to see if they had one and they did, so we are gonna put this one on tomorrow with the bolts i got from napa and when the other one comes, we will replace the other also because the other has a hole in it i noticed.

i am thinking of putting the bolts in from the back of the fram do to lack of space. sound ok, i see from some pictures other people do this.

any other advice before tomorrow morning is greatly appreciated.

LONG LIVE THE 3.0!!!!!!!!!!

 

yea no worries. on the nut side, just use a flat washer, then a lock washer, then a nut.

 

ok, the new hanger is on and truck is back together. we had a hard time installing the leaf spring back on because we couldnt get the u-joint bolts and plate to line up with the axle since we just raised the passenger side of the truck and not the whole rear.

after some help from a another older friend and a chain, we pounded the axle far over enough to line everything up.

the other mount will be coming later this week. the gas tank will make it harder along with the lack of space on the drivers side.

any helpful hints for the drivers side in the near future will be greatly appreciated............

 

Nice work. For the gastank side:

- I stuffed the top of the gastank with rags & clothes, then soaked the hell out of them with water. A lot of sparks ended up landing up there, and the wet clothes obviously helped me out.

- After grinding them down, bang them out without too much force... just be gentle. Ya should be fine... the rivets are round on the far side... but if you bang through with whatever your punching with (i used an air hammer), you could break into the tank, naturally.

- Youll probably want to get the bolts inserted from the backside, so the nut would be on the exterior side. Check out how i did it; i thought it went well. Just have a few extra notched bolts to play with.

Its not much tougher than the passenger side, at least now you have a good grasp of what youre up for.

 

thats exactly why my truck will be washed atleast once a week when the roads get stuff put on them...

 

by the way, while taking the leaf spring off, we noticed the rear hanger and shackle on both sides were only a couple years old and pretty black, they must had been replaced some time shortly before i bought the truck last summer 2006, so that is some good news.

 

thats good news - o'wise youd likely have to change those out soon as well

its kinda funny though - you & i were in the exact same boat there. the last owner of my truck changed out the rear hanger & shackles in 2006. and the front ones rusted out this year. go figure

 

man that sucks, I've got 150,000 miles on it and I live in CT. Maybe I should check it out. I have a lot of surface rust on the frame but no rot on the body or anything.

 

while i was at the dealer yesterday picking the hanger up, the guy said they replace so many rear hangers in the rangers.