I have a 36 Ford—5 window coupe—-hot rod v8 flathead,t-5–5 spd,68 F100–9 in Ford rear—reworked 65 Mustang parallel leaf springs. Have a older bolt on shock lower brkt that bolts to the bottom of the U bolts. Question is: does it matter if the shocks are in front of the axle or in back of the axle/ the lower bracket can be mounted either facing forward or facing to the rear. Will bolt on in either direction or have seen some vehicles that have one shock forward and the other shock to the rear? Looking for hamb advice!!!
Typical installation on 35-48 Ford is the shock on the backside of the rearend and the upper mount on the front side of the spring crossmember.
@Flatheadjohn47 ...... it will make very little difference. Mounting behind the axle will soften the shock effect, but so slightly that you will probably not even notice. Staggered (1 in front/1 behind) is the low cost factory way of reducing axle wrap. There are better ways. It is far more important that the mounting geometry and operating angles are correct. If they are set up to be working to their optimum capacity, being in front or behind doesn't matter.
In 67, camaros had both the rear shocks on the same side of the axle. As a result they wrapped and hopped quite a bit. 67 SS camaros tried to fix that issue with a single sided traction bar on the right. In 68 and 69 they staggered the shocks to try to prevent (or lessen) the problem. I don't know if the same is applicable to hot rods but since quite a lot of them are running camaro (not corvette) engines, camaro transmissions and camaro rear ends...well why the hell not stagger the shocks?
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