The rear leaf spring eye is supposed to ride on top of the shackle mount. Whenever I place a jack under the 3rd member, jack the car up, place stands under the frame then let it back down.....the shackles rotate and wind up in this position. The only way to get them back into the proper position is to jack the car up at the 3rd member, place stands under the rear portion of the springs then let it back down. What am I missing here?
Pretty common when you jack up the body and let the axle hang down. Kind of a pain to get them to flip back over to a normal stance but can be done. I've had to flip these back over a couple of times. I've put jack stands under the axle to support it then slowly lower the body and using a pry bar to flip them back. Have to kind of work it down into position. This happens every time I want to remove a rear tire as I have 1" lowering blocks. Have to dis-connect the shocks also. A pain in the ****.
I have 2" blocks in mine and never have had any trouble. Are your bushings in good shape? Maybe they are wore enough to allow extra movement.
I use a crow bar to pop them back as the car is let down off the jack. Pop them after the tires just touch the ground with no real pressure on them.
OK, so it's not just me! Bushings are brand new. I'll try the pry bar trick next time I jack her up. Thanks everyone!
Gee, back in the late 60s-70s we went out of our way to flip the shackles to "jack up the rear" and get a nose-down rake. Of course a good set of Gabriel Hi-Jackers helped. ..
My '57 is really close to doing it also. With mine it's because I use shocks that let the differential drop an additional 2" for tire changes, which fortunately hasn't happened yet, lol. Guess I'm not burning enough rubber, but with 39k miles on them now, they don't look half worn.
as flyboy said very common same thing happens with tandem axle trailers.also as flash said that was a common and cheap way to add rakeworn bushings make it easier to flip back
Yeah I run them flipped on my 54 to add clearance for the slicks, and flipped on the 58 because the springs are flat and need replaced.
You see a lot of them for sale like this... Most of them say "restored" They do it to get them level. 60 year old leafs sag and started sagging early. Stock old rears and AeroStar fronts give a nice Taxifornia rake.
I had to drop and re-install the rear end 6 or 7 times when I was doing the axle replacement recently and I got pretty quick at dealing with this. I would just put the edge of the jack under the shackle and jack it while pushing to the front until it was mostly level and stick a board under it to hold it. Switch to the other side and do the same, then jack up the 3rd member. The boards will keep the shackles from flipping back under and will just fall out once the shackles starting heading up in the right direction.
I just installed 3" Lowering Blocks, only to find the rear end HIGHER than when I started. WTF? I noticed shackles were in the lower position, but never heard or felt the shackle rotate. New Bushings and Shackles on order. Hopefully, that will take care of the slop in the spring mounts.
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