Yikes! Rear spring hanger broken! Rusted through!

[Bored_2wd]

Holy cr** I finallyfound the source of the clanking in back. It wasn't the tailgate, but pretty close to it. It was the passenger rear spring rear hanger mount, right near the exhaust. It should be next to the frame, and instead it's up on the bottom of the truck bed. All rusty. I've been driving this thing with my daughter, which scares me, but get this. I've gotten 3 loads of dirt since this clank appeared. I thought it was the tailgate! I had more weight in the truck than I've had in a really long time. There was literally about 2 inches between the rear wheel and the fenders it was so loaded down.
There's no way I'm driving my daughter in this truck! It's got to sit until it's fixed. So now the question becomes how do I fix this? Can I even buy a new bracket - are they available through ford? Also, this is gonna be a b*tch trying to get the old one off the spring since it'll now be flopping around. Yikes! Just wondering, nobody happens to have a spring hanger laying around, do they?
--Bob

 

[Hartman]

The fix will be pretty easy. The hanger brackets are riveted on, so drill through those rivets and use 3 grade 8 bolts and bolt the spring hanger brackets on. Then get new shackles and bolt them up. I would do this on both sides. The grade 8 bolts will be much stronger than the rivets. Replacing the rivets is common when people flip the bracket in order to lower the rear.