Haven’t been to this thread in a while so I thought I’d tell ya a story…
Due to my bad driving habits and poor judgment when picking spotters the rear Shrock bumper/tire carrier on the truck was hurting and needed a bit of love...
It rattled and was almost bouncing into the rear hatch. I tried putting a wrench on the 1” hinge bolt to tighten it but it will not move. The "One hand operating latch" no longer closed tight and the spring broke. The spring I found that fits is too light and will not pull the handle.
I emailed Mark from Shrockworks, he sold me a new latch, bearing, washers, 1” bolt w/locknut. He also gave me a tool to polish the new bushing out after it got pressed in.
I bought a 36mm socket thinking of putting a breaker bar with a length of pipe on it. The Brooklyn Crew and I broke two breaker bars trying to get the nut off the bolt (one was a craftsman that Justin got replaced for me, thanks Jus). We decided to cut the top of the bolt and bang it out with a BFH. It did not move and we ended up just flattening the top of the bolt. I decided to leave it like that until after the NER15 since it was holding and I didn’t want to drive the truck with it hanging on unsafely. I also did not want to wheel without the spare on the bumper if we could not get it back together.
After the run Justin and I took a drive down to Bandit4x4 so Dave could help. We cut more of the top of the bolt off and tried again to hit it with a length of steel and a BFH. It would not move and instead started pushing out the lower ear mounting bracket…not good.
We realized that the bolt was seized to the bushing and that the swing arm was swinging by the bushing rotating within the arm rather that the bolt rotating within the bushing.
We then cut the nut off the bottom off the bolt and were able to separate the swing arm from the bumper.
We put the arm in Dave’s 20 ton press and were able to separate the bushing/bolt from the arm.
Old and new;
Misha had suggested that it would be good to put a grease fitting in there to keep that bolt from seizing again (good call Misha) so Dave cut a couple of holes in the bushing and I drilled a hole in the arm. We tapped the hole to accept the zerk Dave had and pressed the bushing it into the swing arm. I polished the bushing to accept the bolt snugly and we got the arm back on the bumper. Put the zerk in, greased dat bitch, changed the latch, put the spare and hilift back on. Good as new yo with no shake.
Could not have figured all this crap out or got it done without my Brooklyn Crew Boys including Dave from Bandit4x4.
Thank you gentleman.