I just thought I would alert others to an issue I just experienced. Mine is a 2004 F150 heavily modified. During this past winter I began experiencing a series of creaks coming from the rear of my vehicle. At first, I thought it was coming from the Detroit Tru Trac Locker; but, inpsecting the locker and gears showed no noticeable issues. I turned my attention to the leaf springs. After a number of attempts to locate the source, I removed the leaf springs and found warn bushings. The metal sleeves were making contact with the shackle mounts. When the frame flexed, the horrible creaking came out. Yesterday, I temporarily installed rubber pads between the bushing sleeve and the shackle. Problem temporarily solved. I have ordered a set of Energy Suspension Hyper-Flex Bushings which will be installed next week.

My truck is now over 83K. Hope this alert helps others in the future.

 

Right now im only at 10k miles and Ive had sqeaking from the leafs since 7k. Though, I have to admit the problem was initiated from when I had gone mudding a couple times. Even still I wash the hell out of my truck everytime I do go. When I took my truck in for the 3rd brake light issue i told them about it and they fixed it up pretty good but the problem eventually came back a couple weeks later.

 

the creaking is a recall thing i took mine in and they swapped them out for the updated ones. what do you call these sort of things tsb's....?

 

Mine started creaking a little after I put the add-a-leaf in. I sprayed some wd-40 in between the leafs about 5 months ago and it hasn't come back yet.

 

Hmm.. your outta your warrenty.. but my dealer replaced my leafs about 15k miles ago.. Had terrible creaking.. I caused it myself I think because I hauled WAY too much gravel in the bed of my truck once...

 

I noticed when the add a leaf's were installed that the 06's have one less leaf in the spring pack than the 05's. Looked at all the 06's at dealer and regardless of bed size, there are only 2 leaf's plus the inverted one, making for 3 total. The 04/05's have 3 plus the inverted one for a total of 4. So the leaf spring assembly is definately different on the 06 models.