Help: How Long should it take to swap rear leaf springs?

I need to put some new rear leaf springs in my 89 Cherokee to get rid of 22 years of sag.

I picked up new crown spring packs and bushings (and installed the bushings in the new springs - there's about 6 hours of my life I'll never get back again :farmer.

I was going to swap in the new springs myself but I'm worried that if I break a bolt, it'll be difficult for me to fix and even more difficult to get the truck somewhere to be fixed. I recently put a new rear axle on with new U-bolts, shocks, and brake cables (I should have swapped the spring then but was unprepared :anon. All the fasteners should come off pretty easily - with the exception of the spring eye bolts which are likely corroded solidly into place.

I'd like to have a reasonable estimate of the time to swap the springs before I go shopping for a mechanic. Anyone have a suggestion? Thanks for any advice.

If you have all the tools in front of you, the car up on stands, and the wheels off: an hour.

Thanks Marsh.

No shop is going to charge you one hour. If you find anyone that stupid, post their information. We needed a full day to do front and rear springs. Get some estimates from shops you might use; it won't be us changing your springs.

hit everything the night before with PB blaster, organize your tools, find an impact gun if you don't have one.

I say 2 hours. seeing as how thats how long it took me.

also a word to the wise, instead of unbolting the spring from the shackle, first unbolt the shackle from the unibody.

that way you don't have to fight the trailer hitch or gas tank skid if you have them.
then flip the bolts so they slide in from the outside instead of out from the inside.

Marshmallow said:

If you have all the tools in front of you, the car up on stands, and the wheels off: an hour.

Click to expand...

I just did mine on Friday - OE replacements. I was on the one-hour schedule until I stripped the forward bolt that goes in the frame rail. Then it turned into a 3 hour job. At my buddy's shop, lifted on the rack, air tools, etc. plus buddy helping. I would say if all the bolts come off easily, in the driveway, with no unexpected problems, 2 hours. There are 7 bolts per side, plus removal of the wheels, plus disconnect the shocks lower bolt so the axles drops a bit. Use two jacks - one to lift up the jeep, one to hold/raise/lower the axle so all the holes line up. Much faster getting the bolts off with any type of electric/air wrench.

If your leaf spring bolts are rusted, or you break a weld nut inside the uni-body, it can take anywhere from one hour to one day to change a leaf spring, depending on your available tools, mechanic skills, and previous experience changing Cherokee leaf springs. Power tools will speed up the process, but any number of commonly occurring rust/breakage issues may slow you down.

Yeah my driver side front leaf welded nut broke loose. Luckily for me at the time, there was a hole in the floor exactly where the weld nut is inside the unibody. Vise gripped that nut, heated the bolt with a shot of mapp gas and viola. I replaced the original bolt with a grade 8 bolt, couple of washers and a grade 8 nut. Solved that issue !!!

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I did a bastard pack. I just used 2 c clamps took off the leaf spring center pin. Chop saw'd the s-10 pack to the correct length and clamped those together, put em in all by myself and took less than 2 hours...

If you plan on dealing with the weldnuts in those little pockets, I'd get a torch.

MAPP/Oxy or oxy/ace is best, propane takes too long.

Drill a 5/16-3/8 hole in the pocket right in the center, and use the torch to heat up the weldnut. This will keep from breaking the nut loose.

At that point, you could be home free or the bolt could be rusted to the leaf spring sleeve.

Again here I just torched the crap out of it (didn't care about the bushings) until it broke free.

Air tools are nice for this, but I've done it with just a breaker bar.