OK, knuckles are bloody and I smacked my head into the butt end of my front axle when a saw blade snapped (dog thought I was down for the count), but the nose is stripped. Plastic, metal and stuff off the front for access, to install the winch and for dealing with way more rust than I expected (is it possible they rust more when they're parked rather than on the road and trails?).
I also stripped all the front suspension parts off. Once again, rust sucks. I had to cut two of the lower control arm bolts out (passenger side). Those things are hard, and they ate about a dozen recip-saw blades before giving up. Did some digging around here and found a part number, and hopefully they're on there way from Silver State Ford by now. Here's just the wreckage from tearing out the lower arms.
The lower balls were Moog, and one (the leaky one) was still fairly fresh. The other, ripped out of the driver's side, looked clean but is absolutely frozen in one spot. No movement. Had to drill out all the rubber bushing stuff (man, that's a fine aroma) which had deformed pretty badly. Center bolts were way off center. It's all getting replaced with an Energy Suspension kit, and trust me, after these rust wars, I will be lubing and anti-seizing the hell out of everything. Raybestos pro grade balls will go back in. Lower arms are now on the strip-and-paint pile.
The most fun came once the uppers were out. Both sides are getting Raybestos pro grade upgrades (with the inner half on the passenger side getting new Energy Suspension bushings as well). The old ones, which seem like stock, either had a hard early life or they did not love having steel rims and 33s on there. They were trashed. The boots were ripped away from the arm, the socket was dry and I can get a solid 1/4-inch of play by hand pulling the post in and out. No wonder 70 mph on the interstate made me nervous. I had been blaming the guy who balances the tires. I might need to recant a few curses there.
The rest of the front end is pretty much along Gmanpaint's time-tested playbook, including new pro grade inner and outer ties rods. I didn't pull the trigger on swapping to coil-overs, although it would be darn easy will everything stripped down and cleaned. Need to save something for the next garage teardown, I guess.
Ready to paint and rebuild ...
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