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Update time: This past week I’ve been going ham. I decided to tackle all the awful jobs all at once because I was getting a low whine from the power steering pump so I went and replaced it with a brand new hitachi unit and swapped the alternator as well while I was in there. Then yesterday I changed the starter because every winter I get a few days where the solenoid sticks and won’t engage for a few tries, so I figured it was prudent to get it changed out ASAP to make sure I didnt get stuck anywhere when it finally stuck permanently. It’s hard to say which job I hated more, but I’ll say this. I want to beat the crap out of whoever designed the alternator mounting system. Theres a small “L” shaped bracket with a nut welded onto the back but the bracket isn’t physically attached to anything, it just rests against the back of the alternator, so to bolt up the new alternator you have to wedge your hand through a mess of wiring harnesses and coolant hoses and around motor mounts and brackets, and finally use the tips of two fingers to hold the nut up to the back of the alternator while your other hand reaches around blind to turn the bolt. Needless to say I was bleeding by the time I managed to get it on and I’m shocked that I didn’t tear anything. As if that wasn’t bad enough, remounting the power steering pump is an exercise in extreme patience because you have to pry the damn thing back into position since the mounts are so tight, and every time you have it almost lined up to bolt through, either the front or the back won’t be perfect and you’ll have to try again but end up overcorrecting and need to go back. And of course it’s all done blind unless you drop your phone in there and take a picture to see, which is what I ended up doing. All in all I ended up logging 14 hours in the garage Fast forward to yesterday and it was time for the starter swap. This job was the one I was dreading the most because of the all the horror stories about how difficult it was, but I have to say it wasn’t nearly as bad as I built it up to be. The only challenging part was reinstalling the new unit because you have to clear the solenoid terminals past a bracket that gives you very little room to move. I didn’t have to remove anything from the truck though, the front diff stayed in place and so did everything else. I even managed to get it past my missing link bar. The key to reinserting the end of the starter into the bell housing (the hardest part) is to have the thin metal gasket in the right orientation so that you can still rotate the starter because if it’s misaligned the part that’s 90 degrees to the rest of it will be hitting on brackets and blocking things Im hoping to never have to do these jobs again, everything about them is just pure suck

Thanks to everyone who replied to the topic! The center link I had purchased from eBay was the problem. Replaced the no name with a Moog DS80594 center link. Now everything works and I was able to line up the studs, torque, and actually insert the cotter pins in. Next is to send it to the alignment bay!

Ok , just got the pathy back and three things went bad AT THE SAME TIME !!!! the coil was arc around distributor , upstream 02 sensor went bad and had a bad wire on injector. The mechanic had to replace one thing at a time then figure the next thing out , but she runs absolutely perfect again .