Hang with me fellas, this might get a little abstract... On the back end of my '31 Chevy coupe, I'm moving the leaf spring hangers from underneath the frame rails to the sides. This is being done to lower the rear and to make it look "racier", kinda like an old Indy car. I wanted springs that were a little shorter than the stockers for aesthetic reasons. What I found was a pair of '47 Chevy coupe springs. Now that we have a little background, here's my question: On the '47 springs, the length from eye to pin is longer on one side than the other. The short side is on the front and the long side is on the rear. The bad news is that's all wrong for what I want to do! Can I run them with the long side in front and short side in back? What'll it do? Thanks! Ed
Yes, you can turn them around and run them. It was an old trick on chevys when converting from the torque to open driveline to do this to center the wheel in the wheel well.
there is an outfid that makes monoleaf springs for rods, including older Chevies. They advertise in Rod& Custom and Street Rodder. Sorry, I don't recall the name and dont have any reference materials at hand.
Taking springs designed for a closed drive application and turning them around is a BIG invitation to wheel hop! Thoe springs were never designed to handle torqu application, as the rears sat on a pivot and the torque tube actually did the "pushing" to move the car forward, pushing on the motor and trans mounts. The more spring you have in front of the axle mounting point on a leaf sprung rear axle, the more likely it is to 'hop' when the spring winds up and snaps back. Using wimpy closed-drive springs will just make it worse! (My 49 would hop with the little 2.8 V6 if I stomped it to hard...I just used stock springs and drove it real easy most of the time, though.) My advice would be to get in touch with Posies or Eaton Detroit Spring and tell them what you have, what you want to do, and give them the vehicle weight and other specifics. They can make custom springs that will work, and will save you headaches and a re-do later! (You may have to run ******* bars, spring clamps, or some other type of traction device if you're gonna have the longer portion in front of the axle centerline though...even with better springs.) Custom springs aren't that expensive, I had Eaton make a set for my old Nova and they installed them right there. It's well worth the cost down the road!
ed.. hack speak the truth.. I can shoot a photo of what that spring to rear relationship looked like.. I wouldnt suggest flipping the springs .. but then again I wouldnt suggest using 60 year old springs. on a high hp application such as yours will be.. sawzall
Yep, like they said, bad idea. Dodge was big on off center leaf construction. What they found was most of the ride quality was determined by the design of the leaves behind the center pin. So they moved the center pin as far forward as they could, which significantly strengthened the front of the pack all but eliminating wheel hop, and created extremely long leaves heading to the shackle that they could adjust to tune the actual ride quality. The end result was the super stock springs that can still be bought today. Reversing a spring of similar design is a tricky proposition. What is the stock length of your current springs as measured across the arch? how far (rearward?) do you want to move the wheel? Can you add leaves to the offset pack to stiffen the forward section of the leaf? These would need to be trimmed once they p***ed the axle to adjust your ride quality and ***ure that the front of the pack was indeed stiffer to combat wheel hop. It can be done you'd be better to move your front perch back and run an equal length spring.
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