As mentioned the other day, the Trooper RS is finally under the knife after two years of moving it around to various storage locations. My mechanic, Jay Gaston who runs Jay's 4WD, is in the thick of it at the moment, taking apart the front axles and brakes to refresh the components within.
The passenger side is back together, but we found the driver's side hub was pretty rough. The bearing race was just falling out, so I found a used replacement at Woonsocket Auto Salvage. New wheel bearings ordered front and rear, and we'll also track down a set of replacement control arms with new bearings pressed in at some point. The cool thing about that last job is this guy - known as Jerry Lemond - still has NOS parts in his barn from his days as the head trainer for Isuzu corporate. He bought out the domestic parts supply when Isuzu stopped selling consumer vehicles in the states.
As part of this, he's offered to have me send him a set of replacement control arms from a southern junkyard and he'll press in fresh bushings before sending them onto me. This project is a bit of a fool's errand - I'll not likely sell it for what I'll have into it - but I really do love this truck and want to see it come back to life.