I am working on a '52 Studebaker pickup, set up as a street gasser. I have been working on the spring stacks, trying to get the correct ride height without being too stiff. The rears were way too stiff and I removed maybe 4 or 5 leaves with no change in ride height. The front springs are different. The front stacks are made of many thinner leaves, and have very little arc to them. Removing leaves to make them ride softer tends to cause the spring to arc backward on compression. I have been juggling spring leaves left over from the rears, and adding them in place of the thin leaves up front that I have removed. The result is I get a bit more arc to the front spring stack. Long story short, I have the ride height where I want it, but the truck has a lean to it. The lean has always been there, even before I started messing with the springs. My question is how should I go about trying to level it out? Do I add a spring leaf to the low side, remove a spring leaf from the high side, add a spacer block as required, or what? I am wondering if having say 5 leaves on one side and 6 on the other is a bad idea, even if it makes the truck sit level.
You find a shop that does spring work and have them rebuild the springs by re-arching them and setting the leaf packs to each other. Done hundreds of them.
I think if there's any Right way to fix it, it would be to keep your spring pack even on both sides so both sides of the Vehicle reacts evenly as they move. Stiffer on one side can make a Vehicle react oddly depending on the road at hand. That said I would say being your leaf spring on all 4 corners use a spacer as needed on the Low corner. Now, in the race car world you would put scales under all 4 wheels and get corner weights with Fuel in as well as Driver and balance the Vehicle side to side with the springs. Some times you add a little weight in spots some times it's a 4 bar adjustment. First thing to make sure of is that you don't have any kind of bind or frozen links that will keep a spring from freely moving through it's action range. Shocks can also be an issue. If in doubt just remove them and see what happens.
A couple of thoughts for the pile: (You may have done these.) Switch sides with the spring packs. If the "lean" is still the same, the fault is not in the springs. Measure from the chassis to level ground and the spring mounts to the ground, ignore the body for now. Your goal is to determine what is square and what is cattywampus. You may find that failed body mounts are the villain, not the springs. Just for giggles, check your tires to be sure they are the same size, side to side. Maybe get a couple of buddies involved. One of them may note that the way you're checking something isn't valid and suggest you check a different way. Does the truck have a circle track history?
Jason @ Pete and Jakes told me the California Kid has a 350lb coilover on one side and a 400 on the other to get it level. He said no one could really explain it, just do it, its not the space shuttle.
I have 250# coil overs on mine and I have to jack the right side about a 1/2" more to get it to launch straight without too much spin on the right rear, but the ride is a little low on the left.
after about 900 years ( ) the same thing happens to the chassis as the springs, the torque from launching and the miles the torque twisting everything to one side takes its toll. One side will always get weaker with time.
Id put a shim in it. If you want to get scientific and overthink it and you need to weight 4corners and get measurements on your spring rates. Go thru it like a stock car chassis and make the loads right. You can fuck around with it forever And that’s why I’d put a shin
Unless there was quite a bit of weight bias L to R that would be stupid. Coilovers are normally height adjustable. Situations like that normally are caused by the frame being wedged ( longitudinal twist altering the spring load) The first thing the OP needs to do is determine which end is causing the lean. Jack up the center of the rear end and measure the heights at the front, then do the opposite to measure the rear heights.
Old pickups often lean to the driver's side simply because they went many thousands of miles with just the driver in them than they did with a passenger along a huge percentage of the time. I had a deputy sheriff pull me over for some obscure reason a few years back and he commented that my truck leaned noticeably to the driver side. When he asked me why I just said "fat driver" and somehow he didn't appreciate that even though he was standing there looking the fat driver in the eye at the time. Thinking back now, maybe he had a truck at home that leaned to the drivers side and wanted ideas. I'd have to agree that going by guess and by golly doesn't work well with leaf springs and you really need to take the springs to a competent spring shop and have them reworked to do what you want them to.
Thank you for some good ideas. I found the problem to be a weak spring on the right front. I could see that it had less arc to it, compared to its partner on the drivers side. ( Thanks for the tip on jacking the rear diff to isolate the problem). It's amazing how a slight difference in spring height can cause a noticeable lean in the body. My spring was only 1/2 inch short, but my springs sit well inboard right under a narrow frame... by the time you move outboard and measure from beneath the doors to the ground, that 1/2" spring sag had created a body lean closer to 3 inches. I went ahead and added one of the long thin leafs I had left over to the shorter stack, and it squared things right up to within 1/16 inch. I am running on the theory that even though the leaf count is different from side to side, the two springs are behaving identical. I guess in static measurement this is true...we'll see if it holds true in motion later.
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