Difficulty: 2/10. A two because you get your hands dirty when you grease the bushings.

This attempts to document my experience with changing the shackle bushings on the front of my truck.

To start, jack up the side of the truck you'll be working on. Jack it up so the tire is about to come off of the ground. With my shackle setup, my optimal height was about 1 click on the hilift below where the tire almost was off of the ground. Make sure your ebrake is on so the truck doesn't roll away. Chock the tires too.

Back off the nuts on the shackle bolts until they are just a little past flush on the nut. Hammer away and push that bolt out (I started on the bottom). You can also try just turning the bolt head counter-clockwise as it may be threaded into the bushing and will then just come right out. Basically do what you need to do to get the bolt out.

Once the bottom bolt is out, the top one comes right off.

Pull out the old bushings, grease up your new ones and put them in. Assemble in reverse order. I found it very helpful to have a second person operating the hilift as I was putting the bolts back in. This is because the shackles don't line up 100% perfectly and it is nice to be able to move the vehicle slightly up or down to get the bolt to just fall right in (with the help of a BFH of course).

While you're down there, inspect your shackle hangar and make sure you don't have the infamous cracks on your frame at the shackle hangar.

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