I have a 29 Tudor that I bought back first of the summer. The body is decent but the engine was BAD MISREPRESENTED. With that being said I have purchased a touring long block from Antique Engine Rebuilders. With a high compression head, and bigger cam. Also have FSI distributor, a Weber carb and intake and a set of Reds headers. And I just purchased an axel from Okie Joe. I also have a set of 15 in wheels in fire engine red powder coat, just waiting on some tires. I’m gonna go fenderless with the kind highboy look. I’m gonna keep the mechanical brakes, but use a set of Flathead Teds floaters and cast iron drums. Enough about me now comes the questions. Can anybody tell me the length of the front spring? I thought about removing some of the leaves and replacing the lower spring with one with reversed eyes. How do you compress or stretch the spring pack to get it re attached? My front cross member has been damaged and repaired, very poorly, in the past thought about having a friend, in the welding, machine shop business, just build me a new one that was flat. So as to get more drop. Any thoughts on that? Also I need advice on using a model t rear spring. What spring? Reversed eyes or normal? How do I compress it? How do I reattache it? Here are a few pics of the car I’m starting with.
To re-attach the front spring, if no spring spreader is available, I just hook up the shackle on one side to the perch bolt and place a small block of wood under the spring eye at the opposite end. The block of wood should be a size that is about 3" long about the width of the spring and tall enough to basically allow the spring eye and perch eye to meet at about level. Jack the axle up forcing it to accept the weight of the car and you will see the spring eye slide towards the unattached perch. When eye is close enough to the perch for the shackle to be attached just install it and put the plate and nuts on. There you have it... I've never found the need to own a spring spreader. If you have a reverse eye spring then the spreader ain't much help to you anyway.
The Jalopy Journal
