Well, I got ambitious (?) and tore into my truck yesterday - a broken rear shackle I posted about earlier. The truck - a 96 Ram 1500 2x4 - was owned by a high school auto shop teacher friend and had been used as a teaching mule a couple years ago, where the students had various systems apart, serviced, and re-assembled. At that time the box had been replaced with a clean 01 southern truck box, and had fresh hardware installed with never-seize at that time. I gladly accepted his offer to pull the box to make better access to the rear suspension, and to anybody that has this option, this is defiantly the way to go. It only took about 20 minutes to remove the 6 bed bolts, 3 fuel filler box screws, couple wiring plugs, ground strap, and have 8 "minions" lift the box and set it on end for a wash down. Gotta love having access to young backs! With the truck back home, I did the whole job from the comfort of my roller chair. Top (spring eye) bolts surprisingly came right out. Bottoms through frame hanger - ummmm, not so much. Had to sawz-all through the outside end of bolt/sleeve inside of hanger, then used the saw to cut the uprights off hanger to gain better access to the inside of the bolt/sleeve, where a 5" cut-off wheel on an air grinder seemed to work better. I had about an hour in each side, including using old top and new bottom bolts to install 2" drop shackles and fresh shocks (which the old ones had also been pulled, bolts cleaned, and never-seized earlier!). To avoid pulling the trailer hitch I did "cheat" and install the lower bolts from the outside. Spent a couple hours today doing a quickie prep on the top and sides of the frame and cross members and spraying some rattle can rust stop enamel on them. Tomorrow a trip back to the school to toss the box back on. All-in-all the job went better than expected, and was made tremendously easier by pulling the box - especially since overhead work doesn't play nice with my 60 year old shoulders. And as a bonus - since I wasn't working overhead, I didn't get the grit/rust shower or anything in my eyes. Even with wearing safety glasses, it always feel like I have kitty litter in my eyes the next day after overhead work.
And a cost FYI - a pair of standard length Dorman replacement shackles with OEM style bushings and new bolts would have been about $35-40 shipped from Rock Auto. Exact same kits locally would have been almost $70 locally! I ended up buying a pair of Crown Mfg. shackles off Ebay - 2" drop, OEM style bushings, and powder-coated for $33 with free shipping - I had about $40 total in them after buying 2 new lower bolts.
I had also scored a set of Monroe OEM style replacement shocks from a close-out wholesaler for about $80 with free shipping. I'm going to see how the stock length shocks work out with the drop shackles - I only changed the shackles, and I did not install or move the spring hangers. So I'm hoping the stock length shocks will be OK - I don't really use the truck for heavy loads or car trailer duty anymore.