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Appreciation post: the weekend my rear leaf spring shackle let go 80 miles from pavement
Two Saturdays back I took my 1998 Tacoma out toward the Owyhee canyons east of Jordan Valley, Oregon, just a day run to test the new 33s and the regeared diffs. About 80 miles from pavement, I heard a bang and the truck dropped onto the bump stop on the driver side rear. The shackle had rusted through where I could not see it, and I had no spare with me. A rancher named Dale pulled up in an old flatbed Ford maybe 20 minutes later, looked at it, and said he had a welder back at his place 9 miles away. We limped there at maybe 5 mph, and he cut a plate from scrap and burned it back together so I could get home. That day taught me more about pre-trip inspection than any forum thread ever did, because I had crawled under that truck a dozen times and never once grabbed the shackle and really pulled on it. Now I keep a spare shackle and bolts in the toolbox, plus a can of fluid film for the frame rails. So what is the one rust spot on your rig that you check every single time, and what made you start checking it?
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