With the exception of torquing them down, I FINALLY finished my body mounts/bushings and 2-inch body lift swap (from 3-inch) portion of the project...
The 4 front seating area bushings (2 on each side, one in the footwell and the other directly behind the seat) were a real pain in the arse as anyone whose done them will tell you. They're pressed fit (likely hydraulically) at the factory and the various methods I saw for their removal weren't even remotely effectively. Driving a punch downward with the bolt screwed in at the bottom as suggested by the instructions I had from Duff were a joke, and I was smashing it like Thor with Mjölnir! Drilling it out as also suggested was a bust-out and homemade bushing pullers made out of 3-inch sections of exhaust pipe only succeeded in stripping out one of the mounting bolts. Sooooo in the interest of refreshing everything as I go, I bought Duff's new bushing kit AND a new "Torch" blade for my Sawz-All. Aftermath of that shown here:
Hindsight being 20-20 I wish I had just cut to the chase and saved all the time I wasted but it's part of the learning process I suppose...
With a new body lift and mounts it made sense anyway to replace the bushings, bolts, etc. I ended up with a lot of extra hardware, which is arguably wasted money, but I'll just add them to the hardware drawer.
While I was at it I had noticed while taking measurements that the body was clearly misaligned on the frame and was off by nearly an inch and a half in both the front and rear, which resulted in the bumper smashing/rubbing one of the front fenders and leaving a massive gap on the other. A couple of heave-hos and it was within an 1/8th of an inch in the front and a 1/16th in the rear...I'll take it!
The bushings were obviously stock/original and SMOKED. Some of them fell apart and were crumbling as I removed them so I'm quite satisfied it was a worthy undertaking. Not the least bit complicated, just a little more time consuming than expected.
The truck sits MUCH nicer now and is dead even/level. I'm going to continue my work on the suspension prior to reinstalling the gas tank and then go from there!
WHEW!