Friday afternoon, while headed over to JoeÆs house to kick-off our wrenching party, Doug was following behind me and made an observationà

Apparently, when I installed my shackle bushings, I over-tightened the bolts on the driverÆs side û because, according to Doug, he could see the passenger side leaf spring/shackle set-up doing its thing, but the driverÆs side was rigid and nearly motionless.

I was quite surprised to hear this, because from the driverÆs seat, I could quite plainly sense the sort of suspension movement back there that you would normally expect to feel. --- And stranger stillà After æcorrectingÆ the problem on Sunday, my suspension is right back to its old tricks again û with the rear end feeling loose and wandery, almost like I have rear wheel steering with worn-out components.



After I installed those shackle bushings, the handling improved quite notablyà but there was still a ways to go before it felt ærightÆ. --- Now IÆm wondering why having one side so stiff made it feel so much better û and if maybe tightening-up BOTH sides to match wouldnÆt take care of the problem altogether. --- Like I said, from the driverÆs seat, everything felt perfectly normal as far as rear suspension movementà so why not at least give it a try?



One theory that IÆm mulling over about all of this involves those prototype springs that I got from Joe Darlingtonà As far as I can tell, thereÆs nothing wrong with the added leaves themselves, but rather in the way that they mate-up with my factory leaves û or more to the point û the way that they DO NOT completely nest with the DORs. --- My original springs were already suffering from spring fatigue before adding JoeÆs set of long and short leavesà as such, there has always been some space clearly visible between the long DORs and the remaining two upper factory leaves on both sides of my Rodeo. --- IÆve just about reached the conclusion that this is a major contributing factor to (if not the actual source of) my crappy handling.

* Ummmà I can still say æcrappyÆ, right?



Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts about that shackle bolt tightness idea (or anything else that might get things back to normal again) FIRE AWAY - I'm all ears!


TIA! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />


Cheers! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />
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