So, while I was under the truck looking at all this and taking measurements and such, I glanced down at one of the shock mounts and discovered a new problem.
At some point the inner ear for the shock cracked off. The brackets had been modified to give a little bit of additional clearance, but unfortunately the stresses apparently became to much for one of the welds. This would explain the increased noise I've been getting from that rear corner lately. While I could just re-weld it, I decided that it was just time to rebuild the rear suspension. The truck has ~160k miles on it, and a lot of them were probably hard miles, so the suspension has pretty much seen its day. I was planning on refreshing the suspension anyway, this is just a bit sooner than I was hoping.
Have you ever seen the clip from Malcom in the Middle where the father goes to turn on a light and the bulb is burnt out, and then several scenes later the wife comes home and notices the light is burnt out and asks him if he's going to replace the light bulb? He rolls out from underneath his vehicle which has the engine out and responds "What does it look like I'm doing???" Yeah, it turned out kind of like that (although thankfully I've already rebuilt my engine).
Since I'm going to replace the leaf spring clamp plates, I should replace the U-bolts as well (technically should not reuse them, even though some do), and since I have those off, I should replace the leaf springs which are also pretty worn and starting to splay apart and have issues. And since I'm doing that, I should replace the rear bump stops as well since I have a pair of new ones in hand already. Oh, and I ought to replace the shackle bushings in the frame, since at least one of them are still pretty old. And I have new urethane bushings for the sway bar. Maybe new shocks too since I'm not entirely sure how old the current ones are, and since I'm doing all this I can get them past the wife without much fuss. Hmm, I really need to replace the outer front differential bushings with the ones from the Outfitter Design kit I have, I already did the center bushing and I'm going to have the truck down for a bit anyway.
Well that turned into even more work. I tried to see if I could replace them without having to pull the front suspension all apart, but that just is a no-go. So now that I'm having to tear apart the front suspension to replace the diff bushings, I should probably replace the lower ball joints and control arm bushings with the new parts I already had sitting around (got the ball joints with the truck and the bushings are urethane's from Siberian Bushing that I ordered to replace the aging originals). Oh, better swap out that off brand CV axle with the OEM spare I have. And the axle seals since those have been on there for about 4 years already and are starting to weep a bit. Hmm, Upper control arms might be OK, but one of them looks like the bushings are starting to go out, so better replace those now rather than having an issue later, plus I'll end up with trail spares. Oh, new front shocks too, got to keep it all matching. OH, look at that, the UCA bolts are a bit buggered, better replace those as well with greaseable bolts so that they don't seize.
And so on, and so forth.
So now I am redoing my entire suspension, both front and rear. Front is getting new OEM axles, Moog UCA's, rebuilt LCA's with urethane bushings, Moog greaseable UCA bolts, AC Delco greaseable sway bar rods, urethane sway bar bushings, Fox 2.0 shocks, new bump stops, and some other minor stuff. Rear is getting new leaf spring clamp plates, U-bolts, bump stops, urethane sway bar bushings, Fox 2.0 shocks, Old Man Emu leaf springs, new shackles with new bolts and frame bushings, and whatever minor stuff comes up. It's a ton of work, and a lot of money, but it's going to end up being better than new when I am done and should make it a lot more enjoyable to drive. It's incredible the difference in ride quality between my 2008 red H3 and this 2008 Alpha H3. The red H3's suspension is in much better shape and is really quite comfortable to drive. The Alpha is definitely showing the 50k+ additional miles it has over my red H3.