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Here I am reinstalling the front springs after both upper and lower control arms were reinstalled. You have to pay attention that the spring is properly seated in the spring pockets. It took 2 jacks to get the travel required to compress the spring fully.

I noticed some yellow paint marks in the front crossmember which convinced me I have the Heavy Duty spring package (I have the 10 leaf leafsprings in the back too, I took 2 leafs out of them previously)

The front springs are so heavy that I could not fully compress them to start the nut on the upper balljoint spindle without lifting up the truck, so we used a large steel tube to hold down the frame so I could start the nut.
Then I torqued both balljoints nuts to spec.

I kept track of the alignment shims and put them back in the right order, but plan to realign the truck after I come back from the US anyway.


The local company that does all the zinc plating for me finally had my parts ready so I could continue the front suspension work.

I went ahead and assembled the front brakes with new hardware:



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Had the dust covers zinc plated, cleaned up the wheel studs and pressed them in. Cleaned and repacked the wheel bearings.



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Finally ready to lower it back on its wheels. The new dust caps are from Dorman, part number 13977. Took me a while to find replacements but these fit well! I also installed new lug nuts.



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The parts that I got from Pat (Rustbucket on the forum) finally arrived!
A set of OEM bumper brackets, the patch panel I need for the hood corner, and a headlight ring. I also ordered the correct large flange hex head zinc plated bolts to reassemble the body panels. These came from Ebay and the seller only shipped to the US, so Pat snuck them into the box for me.



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The weather is warming up here. Already have most of the body panels in primer, plan is to shoot the radiator support, inner fenders, filler panels in gloss black this week. This will be the last week before flying to the US to I have to put the truck back together for storage.

Plan to do one more update before I leave! Have a good weekend!