leaf-link suspensions... learn me something

Mopar's direct connection Racing manuals showed how to make brackets and adjust. The frt half of the spring was real stiff didn't have all the clamps shown in the pic above and the rear half didn't have as many leaves and was soft. I use this on my C/SM when we were not allowed to back half the frame had to stay in stock location, worked well.

 

Its been done with quarter elips, works well enough. Been throwin that idea around for the Manx. That's how it was raced in '64.
There was also a ford truck the ran the Baja in the '70s with a quarter elip setup along the same lines. But they did it for suspension travel. The truck didn't show real well if I recall but the suspension worked well.

The setup with a full spring works better or I should say its easier to control the axle, there is a lot of strain on the top links with a quarter elip setup that is allieviated when you use a full spring. If you're throwin' a lot of torque at it the full spring is the way to go. That's probably part of the reason the factory cars used a full spring setup.

As for the cal track question, a leaf link works nothing like a caltrac bar setup. The caltrac bars use a fulcrum to preload the spring. The leaf link setup uses the instant center theory to make it hook. Much like a modern 4 link.

 

A real four-link is a lot more tunable, and you can get the car lower to the ground than you can with leaf springs.
It's also a ton more expensive. I've got four chrome moly Heim ends (3/4 or 7/8...I don't remember) on mine, at nearly $100 each, the tubes, the threaded tube inserts and jamb nuts, new leaf springs, and home-made clamps.
A 4-link requires eight Heim ends for the bars, plus all their hardware, and two more for the pan-hard bar (a leaf link uses the factory springs to locate the housing side-to-side, while a true 4-link requires a Watts link or Panhard bar), and coil over shocks.

I think for my bomber, 60 adjustments to find the final instant-center is enough, and it was pretty cheap.

Lots of old-school Mopar bracket cars are still using it, with great results.

-Brad