Rear spring hanger question

[EDKtrans]

A recent unplanned off road excursion has left my 3500 broken and bruised. Some front suspension work will be required, new front and rear axle's, some wheels, and what seems the worse is that the jolting popped some rivets holding the right rear front spring hanger to the frame. The hanger looks fine, the frame is fine, but a couple of the rivets popped out and the rest are loose. The dealer says this isn't repairable and will likely lead to the truck being totaled out, I look at it and see something that should be repairable. Anybody know if this is actually repairable, or is there really a good reason why not?



Note the missing rivets on the left...



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[HBarlow]

I don't have a solution but would begin asking questions among the off road racing community, truck repair facilities, and frame shops that have the latest expensive high tech frame measuring and straightening equipment.

Dealer service departments are often only parts changers on modern cars and trucks and can do brake work, replace a few parts like water pumps, fuel pumps, etc.

 

[jhenderson]

Spring hangers are replaced regularly on heavy trucks. Many times frames are shortened or lengthened, and wheel bases are altered. Cut all of the rivets off and replace them with grade 8 hardware.

 

[Hoefler]

Spring hangers are replaced regularly on heavy trucks. Many times frames are shortened or lengthened, and wheel bases are altered. Cut all of the rivets off and replace them with grade 8 hardware.

Done it many times installing and building wreckers, wench beds, dump beds, etc. .

 

[RDeFayette]

The dealer won't do the work because of the liability issue. The hangers are rivited from Dodge/Ram (whoever) and unless they (Dodge/Ram) has an authorized/approved factory repair for this situation the dealer is not permitted (unless he's braindead) to monkey with this. If he was to he might as well just hand over the keys to the dealership to the next lawyer walking in the door. Yes it sucks because it can be fixed as jhenderson said but the dealer is not going to be the one to do it. Find an independant (frame shop) that will. Probably still going to have to sign a liability waiver. Thank you lawyers.

 

[NIsaacs]

Like others have said, it is an easy repair. Rivets can be an odd size v/s bolts, so I would drill them to the next bolt size so you get a good fit, at least 1/2 inch.



Nick

 

[DRyder]

Upgraded my bronco 2 back in the day from 2wd to 4wd and had to grind off the I beam rivets and install the new bracket. I used quality nut and bolt setup and it is still fine today. Go with the bolts and educate your dealer on your ingenuity

 

[mwilson]

One great thing about rivets is the fact that they swell into the hole when they are bucked in at the factory. Makes a nice tight fight, we do the same thing on semi-trailers, those rivets are bucked/swelled into place.



But sometimes due to the fact the rivet holes are punched at the factory as opposed to being drilled can make an odd size hole, 1/2 a size off, etc. which doesn't matter to a rivet so I would drill your hanger and frame as Nick says above to the next common size so as to have as tight a fit as possible when replacing rivets with Grade 8 bolts.



Mike.