One of the 3 original issues with the car was an occasional ticking from the rear wheel, mainly at low speeds. I decided it was likely the wheel bearing and went to work removing the rear suspension.

 

Wheels came off easy, no surprise there. Rotors had come off no problem as well, but I screwed around with the rear ones for a while before discovering the rivets.. my first experience with riveted rotors and apparently the fronts had been replaced before. No major problems drilling out the rivets, but I did manage to break a bit.

 

Now the fun really begins.. Removing the shocks and strut rods.

I busted out the breaker bar and started crankin’ on the lower shock bolt. Passenger side wouldn’t moved so I went to drivers side, and was able get the bolt loose with a little bit of oompf. Welp, I got the driver side so the passenger side has to break loose too, right? I couldn’t get enough leverage on it so in a stroke of genius, grabbed a scissor jack and put it under the breaker bar. That got me all the leverage I needed, plus a little extra. Snapped the threads right off the shock mount. Sweet, now I get to replace those too.

 

Okay sweet, lower shock bolts are off. Upper shock bolts came off with relative ease and shocks were out. Back to the strut rods.

Started using the breaker bar again on the backside of the lower shock mount (the one that needs removed to get the struts out). No combination of breaker bar, penetrating fluid and torchy torchy was working, and with several more old rusty nuts to remove, I went to the parts store and got a nut splitter. With a little bit of effort, I split the nuts off of both lower shock mounts.

The upper strut rod bolts near the differential were split off as well (I was just about over screwing with the penetrating fluid and torch), and the camber bolts pushed right out. I tried to wiggle the lower shock mount out and quickly switched to a hammer. Several whacks later, I realized The shock mount hadn’t moved at all and had in fact begun mushrooming. Cool.

 

Judging by the timestamps on your posts, you need to slow down!
If'n' it were my car, I'd have soaked the different nuts with PB Blaster for days/weeks prior to trying to remove if they are that crusty.
It also doesn't sound like you're a finesse-type of guy. Given that observation, I'd recommend you stop after you yank off the trailing arms and send them out for rebuild.

 

That tick may be something else like a u joint or brake part.
well you are at least at new bushings..you can measure bearing after removing half shaft...and inpect u joints

take some pics!

 

I checked the forum and saw that it’s a kind of frequent issue. I gathered that the strut rod bushing had frozen to the bolt; the most frequently used solution seemed to be sawzall. I wanted to reuse the strut rods if possible, so I went back to the parts store and got a pulley remover.




I put the center bolt on the end of the shock mount I had been whacking (red arrow) and the three jaws very carefully on the bracket holding the shock mount (yellow marks).



Back to the breaker and I began tightening the pulley remover trying to push the shock mount out. I waked away a couple times as I thought the pressure of the pulley remover jaws would break the bracket.. I ultimately took the pulley remover off and went back to the hammer to see if the pulley remover had somehow broken it free. It didn’t.

Put the pulley remover back on and tighten it back up. Got to the point that I couldn’t it tighten anymore and tried hitting the pulley remover center bolt (theory that the pressure of the remover plus the hammer whacks might do it), but that wasn’t doing it either.

Alright. So I kept the pulley remover on and tried a new approach. With my big ratchet on the pulley remover, I started tapping the opposite side of the shock mount. I applied pressure to the ratchet, and with each tap of the hammer, the center bolt on the pulley remover started moving. A few taps and turns later, I could see a gap forming between the shock mount and bracket; it broke free!!!

A couple minutes later I had the driver side should mount out, and with it the strut rod. With my strategy developed, I headed to the passenger side.

 

With the pulley remover on the passenger side shock mount, I began tapping and tightening. The shock mount broke free and all was swell. When it was 2/3 of the way out, the pulley remover completely seized. After briefly poking around, I took the remover off and saw the center bolt..



No wonder it seized up. The puller was rated for 5 tons and I have a hard time believing I was putting more than 5 tons on it but maybe I was.

Swapped out the tool and the shock mount pushed the rest of the way out no problem. Both shock mounts and strut rods successfully removed.

 

That left me only with half shafts and trailing arms. No real hang ups on the half shafts, though I did have to bend the French locks to get to the wheel side bolts. Also had to use a 2x4 to prevent spinning, but I assume these are both fairly typical.

 

With half shafts out, I started to work on the trailing arm pivot bolts. Lucky for me, the nuts came off no problem, almost done! I tapped the bolt a few times and worked my way up to pretty solid whacking. Apparently, I had another super cool seized bushing.



To the forum, and sawzall seemed inevitable on this one. I borrowed my buddy’s cheap battery operated sawzall and some Demon carbide tooth blades.

A quick look revealed that the shims had rusted completely together and I’d be cutting through those as well.



My buddy’s sawzall was a p.o.s. and the battery was dying quicker than I could cut. Borrowed a corded Bosch sawzall from a much cooler friend and went back to it. I’m almost certain I was doing something wrong, but several hours and 4 carbide blades later, I had made the inside and outside cuts on both trailing arm pivot bolts.



Huge win. Had a few beers after this one. And with that, removal was complete.

 

Yeah, I’m going to say those TAs are shot. Time to fire up the checkbook!

 

That rust isnt y9uor friend for sure. Can you salvage the shims enough that you can identify them and have a good place to start when you put in new ones? And in my experience I never had a wheel bearing tick. THey always growled at me. The u joints usually ticked. But either way your rear end looked like it need some love anyway. I would look at new arms, the whole she-bang!!! While the arms are out it would be a good idea to wire wheel and de-rust your frame pockets and any part of the frame you can touch....I'm sure this was already on your list but thought I would point it out anyway. Good luck!!!

 

You're deep into the rabbit hole now so you might as well just throw your ears back and remove EVERYTHING. TA's, Spring, Rear End, Crossmember etc., everything. De-rust and paint frame areas as Roger pointed out so you have a fresh frame to install he clean pretty parts back onto.

Unless you have the tools to rebuild the TA's I would send those out as cores and get fresh rebuilt units. All new rubber every where and sand blast and paint everything removed. You can clean and repaint the rear end assuming nothing is wrong with that or send it out for a refresh while your here.

There is nothing I see from your pictures that dead presidents won't fix. Good luck and check in with us on how its going, I like these kind of projects.