Shock absorber replacement nightmare
I was humbled today by a normally simple maintenance job on my 1994 33’ Holiday Rambler. So far I haven’t even been able to remove nut #1 on the front passenger side shock absorber. I’ve done nearly a...
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Hi all y’all
I finally got the shocks mounted. What a learning experience! Who would’ve thought removing/retightening eight nuts and bolts would be so hard. After reading through the advice given I went up to my storage unit in Austin and fetched my 20 gallon air compressor down to my RV in San Marcos. Lesson #1, the air compressor is a lot heavier for me at 66 then it was when I was 45 or 50 LOL. I went to the local rental place and rented a 3/4” drive air impact wrench and at 8am I started to work. Lesson #2, get a larger bottle jack, the 3-ton jack with built in jack stand, while cool, was hard pressed to lift either front corner of my RV high enough to remove the wheels (needed to get to the top shock absorber bolts). After four hours I was done, it would’ve gone much quicker and smoother with larger jacks and a nicer work area. I was on a gravel RV pad with a large piece of cardboard between me and the gravel. The air impact wrench worked great, but even with the 1,100 ft/lbs of torque it generated I still had to put my torch to a few of the nuts.
A few people have suggested that this is a job for a garage. While I understand their logic, I’ve found from years of watching my peers that it becomes too easy to say things like “This is too hard a job for me.” Or “I’m too old for this stuff”. Thoughts like that soon become self-fulfilling, and you get to a point where you truly can’t do things anymore. I’m certain that if I were 20-30 years younger, this job would’ve been much easier and taken much less time, and I wouldn’t be aching nearly so much now (thank gawd for Aleve) but right now all I have is time and I get satisfaction out of completing tasks that most guys leave to someone younger. But that’s just masochistical me I suppose LOL!
Thanks again for everyone’s help and advice I really appreciate it as I head into the brave new world (for me) of truck repair.
Steve
I finally got the shocks mounted. What a learning experience! Who would’ve thought removing/retightening eight nuts and bolts would be so hard. After reading through the advice given I went up to my storage unit in Austin and fetched my 20 gallon air compressor down to my RV in San Marcos. Lesson #1, the air compressor is a lot heavier for me at 66 then it was when I was 45 or 50 LOL. I went to the local rental place and rented a 3/4” drive air impact wrench and at 8am I started to work. Lesson #2, get a larger bottle jack, the 3-ton jack with built in jack stand, while cool, was hard pressed to lift either front corner of my RV high enough to remove the wheels (needed to get to the top shock absorber bolts). After four hours I was done, it would’ve gone much quicker and smoother with larger jacks and a nicer work area. I was on a gravel RV pad with a large piece of cardboard between me and the gravel. The air impact wrench worked great, but even with the 1,100 ft/lbs of torque it generated I still had to put my torch to a few of the nuts.
A few people have suggested that this is a job for a garage. While I understand their logic, I’ve found from years of watching my peers that it becomes too easy to say things like “This is too hard a job for me.” Or “I’m too old for this stuff”. Thoughts like that soon become self-fulfilling, and you get to a point where you truly can’t do things anymore. I’m certain that if I were 20-30 years younger, this job would’ve been much easier and taken much less time, and I wouldn’t be aching nearly so much now (thank gawd for Aleve) but right now all I have is time and I get satisfaction out of completing tasks that most guys leave to someone younger. But that’s just masochistical me I suppose LOL!
Thanks again for everyone’s help and advice I really appreciate it as I head into the brave new world (for me) of truck repair.
Steve
