I am hanging a 9" Ford in the my '33 Ford and ordered the Speedway spring hangers. After staring at it for a few hours last night I called Speedway and found out that they are designed to be used with a straight rear spring and not the stock spring with the curve in it therefore they are too long. I now have to decide what to do. Should I order a Posies straight spring for the rear that will drop the rear 2.5" (cool) or should I use a stock 39 or 40 spring? ( I understand I have to grind the spring pack a bit to get it to fit.) Will using a stock 39 or 40 spring drop the rear of the car? Or should I just order up spring hangers from Pete and Jakes that are designed to be used with the stock spring? I am running a "new drop" front axle with a TCI spring in front. 5.25 x 16 tires and the 9" out back with 7.50 x 16 tires. I only mention this for consideration of the stance the car will achieve with a stock rear spring vs. a lower spring. What do ya think.
It's always a crap shoot when mounting a leaf spring since they never sit exactly like you think they will anyway. Personally I would use the stock 33 spring and the correct P&J hangars. Then assemble it and maybe even drive it a bit to settle it to see if it sets where you want it to. Then you can always take the spring apart and de-arch it a bit with a Mart-O-Matic or a sledge and 2 bricks if needed. One thing to consider though, is that a reverse eye main leaf for 32-34's is hard to come by, if you would need to go way lower. I don't know of any national manufacturers that will sell just the main leaf without all the rest. It's because of that curve in the middle. I've called all I could find to get one for the 32 I'm working on. I'm just gonna flatten it with the sledge method after I see how much lower it needs to sit. Hopefully it will be low enough. alchemy
How low do you want to go? This is a stock 40 type straight spring with 4" shackles. The sport coupe uses the curved spring with 4" shackles. Any lower and you'll need to "C" the frame. Straight or curved shouldn't make any difference. Just personal prefference.
i think you answered your own question. use the Pete & Jakes spring hangers that are designed for the curved spring. they fit and work great. do as alchemy says and put it together and drive it for a while and see where the ride height ends up,then make adjustments
I would also get the right hangers and keep the original curved spring. If you want reversed eyes, make yourself a Mart-o-matic and reverse the arch in the main leaf.
If you've got the 33' spring, I would run it. I didn't have one, so I scraped up a 40 spring. Like you said, it wont fit in the cross member. I cut my cross memeber out and replaced it with 2x2 tube and a plate. Looks basically like a So Cal set up. It sits real nice and rides pretty well too. Here's a bad pic I took during the build up. Crease Barons So Tex
Not to throw a new topic into your thread, eyeball, but in looking for a stock rear spring for my 34 tonight, I came across a 36-39 Ford rear end that had a stock eye on one end of its spring main leaf and a reversed eye on the other end of its main leaf. This rear end has not seen the light of day for a long, long time. I don't think Henry would have made it this way by accident. Anybody got any kind of logical explanation for this oddity? Maybe roundy-round racers trying to compensate for the effects of centrifical force??? I would like to think that there was a reason rather than somebody's incompetence. I'll just sleep better knowing there was a reason.
In early Ford tech, any truly weird mods are likely to have circle track origins. They usually had stiff restrictions on special parts, and so got into all sorts of arcane trickery with what they were allowed. Usually, the losers spent their time trying to flog more out of the engines and the winners spent their time flogging the suspension... This spring probably came from a track that had a page of rules on stock shackles and arch, and the owner just kept on looking until he found a part not mentioned in the rules to put in some side to side jacking.
I think you're right, Bruce. That's got to be it. I could have used the spring on something else (the rest of the rear is thrashed) if the main leaf spring eyes were the same. Probably not worth hauling it home as it is. Not much circle track racing in these parts any more.
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