Rockhound's Offroad Adventures
Working on the little gray truck, Tuffy II                                                     Replacing bent spring and Perch

Somewhere between the All Pro Customer Appreciation run, and the last run to the Hammers with the Tinbenders, Tuffy II managed to bend the drivers side rear  Marlin 4" springs.

You can see the bottom helper spring is bent down. The next one up is also, not so visibly, bent.

In this shot you can see the spring perch is also starting to collapse.

I contacted Marlin Crawler, Stuart warranteed the defective spring and I upgraded to the USA built springs hoping to avoid problems in the future.

When I did the Spring Swap, Marlin had a sale on springs. I found out they were imported. For the extra money, I'm hoping the USA built springs last longer.

Out with the old....For this job I picked up some new jack stands from Harbor Freight. They extend to allmost 28". 

Stewie also sent me a new perch to replace the bent one. This time I used some 1/4' stock as gusseting to the ends in an attempt to strengthen them.

If you look at the rear alignment hole, it is starting to elongate. I need to check the torque of the u-bolts more often!

Here I almost have the old perch cut off the axle.

Cleaned up and ready for the new one.

Here it is all put back together. This design should be more durable. I may run a bead along the bottom later. What do you think?

The passenger side spring perch wasn't bent, so I didn't have to replace it. I did add gusseting, to prevent the possibility of bending.

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