nice. I was fussing with my shackle bolts last weekend on the trail. I'm going to try this and see how it works.
If possible I'd suggest running this top and bottom. So in general, you only need two small flat pieces per shackle assembly (8 for the entire truck): One piece to stop the upper bolt from rotating and one piece for the lower bolt. I do this because I've had both upper & lower nuts come loose.
In actual fact this is nothing too special, it's just that the generic shackle design on the market does not use a pressed fit shackle bolt like the original Toyota shackles. So what this trick is doing is it is fixing the bolt with the shackle plate so that the bolt always rotates with the plate (as originally intended by Toyota). Once the bolt is fixed with the plates, the nut will also be fixed to the bolt
as well as the opposing shackle plate and won't be able to slowly work its way off.
You could also do this for free with a welder at the expense of a crude finish: Remove the bolt and lay a bead of weld tangent to each shackle bolt hole (of only one side of only one plate per shackle assembly). Then use a grinder and neatly finish with a flat file to manipulate the weld bead into a nice flat edge that rides up against one of the six sides of the shackle bolt. Done!
Another nice thing about this is when you are checking torque or servicing your shackles, you don't need to hold two wrenches anymore. With the bolt fixed in place, you can just loosen/tighten the nut using only one wrench.
BigMike
