I have always wanted an older truck (say pre 2000s) that can be easily worked on. As a farm truck, it wouldn’t get that many miles on it, so I don’t need a new-fangled one with a lot of features and I do like the old simple vehicles personally. When this 1989 Ford F-250 HD with the 460ci V8 popped up, I had to jump on it.

1989 Ford F-250HD

Overall, the truck was in good condition minus some knucklehead that knew next to nothing about electrical taking a whack at a few things. The previous owner had done a lot of mechanical work to it and my background as an Electrical Engineer makes wiring jobs a breeze.

One common problem with these old beasts is the piss poor design of the rear leaf spring hangers. This isn’t just a Ford thing, a couple of the other makes from this era also did the same thing. These rear hanger brakets love to rust out and cause all sorts of havoc. Furthermore, mine appeared to have a broken spring as well right at the front. Thus, I really needed to replace a few things.

Rear Spring Hanger Rust There should be a round hole for the spring bolt to connect to here ^.

Rear Broken Spring

Parts Lookup

Most folks I have talked to about these old Fords find that they can get parts all day long from junkyards. I have had the worst luck with this in the Dayton area, so I opted to purchase mostly new parts since I would probably burn more money in fuel trying to hunt down some leaf springs the hard way.

I needed the following for this job:

  • Leaf spring packs
  • Rear spring hangers
  • U-bolts (5/8" x 3 5/8" x 14"), two per side, more on the length later, you may need the shorter ones for your model
  • Front leaf spring bolts (5/8" x 5"), one per side
  • Rear spring shackles
  • Rear spring bolts (9/16" x 5"), two per side

Note some of the bolt size differences between the front and rear. I hope this helps someone as I got the wrong bolts the first time around. Remember, if you are hunting for hardware locally (I got lucky via a combination of my local Ace Hardware and Menards) for suspension work that you need Grade 8 hardware and locking nuts (don’t get the ones that lock with the nylon inserts, you want the ones that have a slight deformation to them).

There are a number of different leaf packs available for this series of Ford. The F-250’s came in a number of configurations based on the GVWR you ordered. Mine runs in at the 8600lb rating making it technically a F-250HD (even though there are no external markings that indicate this). Not only did my truck have the heavier capacity leaf spring packs (4+1), it also had the overload spring package that is supposed to increase your load capacity by about 700lbs per my research. With both these options, you need to get the longer 14" U-bolts… the standard 10.5" ones that pop up when you do a traditional parts search did not work for me.

What helped me figure all this out was a VIN decoder I found hosted on LMC Truck’s website. I have a link below for anyone who may have interest or need.

VIN Decoder for 1980-1996 Ford Trucks (LMC Truck)

Overall Job

The actual repair wasn’t too bad. If you have a cutting torch, this goes really easy. I do not, so I resorted to grinding the factor rivets the hold the rear spring hangers on. Once you remove the rivets and old rusted brackets, you can bolt the new ones in with 7/16" Grade 8 flange bolts and locking nuts. I won’t go into all the details here because… well I forgot to take enough pictures. Trust me though, it really isn’t too terrible of a job if you have the right parts ready.

My only recommendation: do one side at a time, that way you can refer to how things are to go back together regularly.

I hope this helps someone looking for details on these old trucks and feel free to reach out to me if you see anything I missed.

-Russ