I noticed one day that my truck seemed to be leaning to one side. I got out and checked for a low tire and I noticed that inside the box of the truck there was a bulge there about the size of a grapefruit and the steel was cracked/torn through. I looked underneath and noticed that the passenger side rear leaf spring shackle had broken, and the leaf spring had swung up and now the leaf spring was resting against the underside of the box and holding up the weight of the truck there.

There was no moment that I ever heard a sound that would indicate this happened, and I was on a long highway road trip when it must have happened. The end of the leaf spring had destroyed the box of the truck, so I jacked up the truck and placed a piece of scrap 1x6 lumber between the spring and the box so that no more damage would occur until I could get a new shackle. I had to hammer the bulge back down with a 30 pound maul.

I bought the truck in the USA and live in Canada so there was no warranty. I think I paid around $180 for a new shackle. The broken shackle appeared to fail at the welds which corroded at an extreme rate until they failed. No shackle should fail on a 3 year old truck, I've never even broke one on a 20 year old truck! I had to live with the hole and bent up box until I rolled the truck and destroyed it on icy roads when the VSC, 4x4 and ABS quit working.