Fight with rust (XJ leaf spring replacement)
Time has come to lift up our Cherokee (XJ) a little bit. After carefully browsing offers I decided to equip it with 3″ lift kit from IROC upgraded with full leaf springs from Procomp. Installation process is quite easy and straight forward. Everything is well described in the installation manual. Except of one thing – how to unbolt leaf spring front bolt.
Jeep’s engineers did really great job here – they welded the nut inside frame rails. Why is it a problem? Because during the years of life rust slowly glues together bolt with the inner steel sleeve of the leaf’s bushing. When you have access to the nut you can unbolt it and then carefully tap the bolt to loosen it out. When the nut is welded inside the rail the only way to take it out is loosen the sleeve on the bolt beforehand. How to achieve it?
First you have to loosen the rust inside the but. They were kind enough to leave inspection openings in the rails. Using them you can spray the nut with some good penetrating oil. The goal is to be able to turn the bolt about half of the turn. And not screw the thread. In my case it took about 5 sprays over 2h to loosen the rust enough to turn the bolt about one turn. Then the real fun begins.
Armored with die grinder with cutting wheel cut off the leaf spring just next to the bushing ear. Then turn the sandwich (ear, bushing and bolt) about half turn and cut it again into two halves. The result is shown below:
Now when you get rid of the leaf spring ear, cut and remove the outer bushing shell:
It’s quit tight there so I used air grinder with 3″ wheel. After this you have exposed bushing rubber. Cut it with utility knife
and get rid of it. Now we got to the point – inner sleeve glued with rust to the bolt. Fortunately this sleeve is made out of sheet steel part without welding. So turn the bolt until you see small grove in the sleeve:
Using sharpened flat screwdriver and hammer and bend out the sleeve. Then pour some penetrating oil and loosen the sleeve completely. Now taking out the bolt is real breeze!
Here is some puzzle picture to show all the parts again together:
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