Took the Coleman Coupe rear leaf spring apart today to do some restoring ( more like cleaning/painting etc.). Over the years I have heard so many ways to go about it. What do you guy/gals do to redo leaf springs?
I just clean them really well, hit them with a flapper disc, and give them a good coat of paint. After that I use a good graphite grease in a dab at the end of each leaf if they don't have poly rub discs.
I usually sandblast , epoxy primer , paint them. Then put spring liner in between the leaves...really seems to improve the ride. On my current build, I had the leaves powder coated. It's cheaper than paint now.
Grind the bottom side of the ends so they don't dig in to each other. We used to grease them up good with Texaco Marfax grease then ***emble and wrap with electrical tape.
I always finish the edges. I used large shrink tube on my A sedan back in the 70's. lined the springs with Teflon first. Worked very good. On this car I want the springs to show. Thanks for the input.
Saw a Miller at Milwaukee years ago. Springs were metal finished[polished] and then gun blued. Coolest springs I ever saw.
I throw the leaves into the sandblasting cabinet, scallop the ends and chamfer the undersideof the ends. Flapper wheel out the indentations from years of the ends of the leaves digging in to the one below. I grease between the leaves with red ch***is grease. I always paint them but i want to start wrapping them and only painting the eyes on the mainleaf and just leave the rest greasy.
Haha man, everybody knows you're supposed to put your last name in front of the body style now. It gives your car instant provenance.
Question: Where can you get the polyliner material? Is it available in black? Would like to try this in my roadster.
If you don't want to use the spring liner material, I had very good results by coating between the spring leaves with Never-Sieze. That is the compound used on nuts and bolts to allow easy removal. It allows the springs to flex with no bind or friction.
Leather-wrap, baseball s***ched, is a great look after doing the cleanup, tip-beveling, painting, greasing.
Originally Posted by greg32 Saw a Miller at Milwaukee years ago. Springs were metal finished[polished] and then gun blued. Coolest springs I ever saw. That sounds real nice! - It may look good for a (short) time but gun bluing and any "controlled" oxidation process on steel is not meant for moisture and will rust in short order. But, in a time when bare steel bodies get lots of attention, this may be acceptable. - EM <input id="mac_address" value="" type="hidden">
I clean them, flapper the wear marks, grease the **** out of them, wrap them in gaffing tape, then paint them. Done it on a couple Model As and my old '57 Chevy truck. I love the ride!
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