I suspect my model A had the front buggy spring modified and the main leaf flipped over and the eyes rolled,it sat pretty low and looked like it might rub the fender bolt.I wanted to raise it about an inch. I took it to my buddies shop we removed the front spring and took it apart flipped the main leaf over and re-arched it.We traced the outline before and after.When I took the spring off no problem but to put it back on we had to make a spring spreader.Any ideas why it was so much shorter after we flipped it?
they get longer when you reverse them. hard to picture, but they do. there was a thread a while back some one drew a sketch of why, sorry i am too dumb to do that, but basically, if you put a square on the leaf, centered on the hole, you will see that due to the arch, the hole on top is a longer space to the other hole, than the hole on the bottom. look at it this way, if the leaf was straight, they would be the same. now, put an arch in and the length is different between the top and bottom hole. sleep on it !!!
Rusty valley has it right. When reversed the eyes angle out. When stock, they angle in. I had a spring made and took them the old one for a pattern. I told them I needed it shorter and reversed. The made the new one the same length as the one. They had to make another one
You are assuming you started with a stock spring that had been re-arched at some time. But what if you started with an after-market reverse eye spring? Or maybe a later Ford main spring that had altered for use on the car. I don't know, just spitballing here. With stock springs being so plentiful, I might have sourced an original and sold/traded the reverse eye. But regardless, it sounds like you've got it back together again and are satisfied with the result, so that's the main thing.
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