lowering leaf springs

[ikon31]

I fitted a set of leaf springs to my truck that I had removed a leaf from in order to lower it.

if you look at this picture, we removed the 3rd from the top (in the set of 4 main leaves) leaf.



now I realise that I replaced some saggy, rust (and slightly snapped) leaf springs with some 500mile "new" springs, so they are going to much stiffer than the ones that where on. I've left it about 2 weeks to settle, and its just not low enough, to be fair, its hardly noticable,

I'm rocking 3" blocks already, and i'm wondering which leaf would you go for next, I don't use the truck for carrying much (200kg motorbike at most) I understand each leaf has a specific use, so what ever is gonna lower it the most really

don't want to resort to this (jussst yet)



actually, looks like hes only removed the 2nd and 3rd leaves??

[popuptoaster]

You can have the eyes reversed or the springs recambered, possibly best if you don't get them set so they bend the wrong way though, if you have any load at all on it and get stopped it'll look overloaded and probably get you a ticket, i believe its possible to recamber them cold with a bloody big hammer, a press or a welded up jig and a bottle jack, heating them is frowned upon.

[ikon31]

heating is bad, heating and cooling the metal can course the properties to change, like making it more brittle etc.

I thought about "reshaping" them, but surely getting both the same without using a correct machine would be very difficult.

My plan was to remove the 4th from the top leaf, i assume the two flat bottom leaves to are to stop the top 4 from bending past flat when fully loaded??

[Dez]

the 4th one. anything else is pushing your luck, both in terms of outright load/bump handling ability, and axle wrap.

as you say, the thicker bottom two are overlaod, springs, so don't actually do anything unless youre heavily laden.

personally id be looking at getting them reverse-eyed and decambered rather than removing leafs, itll handle/drive 100X better. i learnt a long time ago that the easist way to get a leaf sprung car to handle terribly is to remove too many meafs, or add too many blocks.

I have a decambering jig I made up using a bottle jack that been used to great effect on quite a few retros now, theres a thread on here about it somewhere.

[popuptoaster]

I think I saw somewhere (maybe on the front of a Fiat 126?) someone took one leaf out and then refitted it upside down, so it pulled the spring flatter, must have taken a fair bit of clamping to get it back in though.

[ChasR]

In your position I would decamber as well. In my case it delivered where I wanted (no axle tramp, comfy ride and good handling as far as leaf springs go. I admit I had Superflex bushes too but I would like to think the springs played a part too.

[Seth]

There's a picture of the Jonny69 built device I used to do the Hillman's rear leafs here:

retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=readersrides&thread=37503&page=33#1301867

Took longer than I thought it would as I was worried about going too far so there was lots of spring assembling/disassembling, and I also found I had to decamber all the leaves so that they fitted nicely together or the ones left with the original curve just pulled the pack back into the original sort of shape.

[8bitash]

jones springs in birmingham quoted me a very reasonable price to decamber and reverse the eyes on spring. I opted for the bottle jack and jig route and it worked well.

[ikon31]

i'm gonna pop the forth leaf out, and then look into building a jonny69 device

[tijs]

I wouldn't, turn the springs up side down... the powers involved are really strong..
we tried it with my trabant, but were not to sure about it, so I disassembled it again and ordered an adjusted one.

this is what we made.. we were pretty sure one of us would loose his ability to get child support while tightening down the bolt if it had snapped...


it did lower the car for about 5-8 cm's i think... order a -18cm spring now