harsh ride

Last night,my father and I took a ride in the 34 ford pick up. It has traditional (stock) front buggy spring in front, 3/4" spring travel, and is running 18 lbs. air press. in front tires. Rear has traditional(stock) buggy spring with 4 leaves taken out, and ladder bars. Maybe 3/4" spring travel, running 22 lbs. in rear tires. My question to any one who has built a setup like this, is the ride extremely hard? The pickup origionally was flathead,3spd,and now has lighter 302/auto combo. Can I take springs out of front pack, and if so, how many. Still has 5 in back, should I take more out? Love this truck, but the ride is so hard, kinda takes all the fun away. Installed a new cd unit, skips so bad it's almost inoperative already. Any and all comments will be appreciated.

First thing I would say is that 3/4' travel is not much and accounts for a lot of the trouble..If you can improve that somehow that would be good..

Taking out a leaf or 2 can help as that softens the spring rate..Next is the shocks to look at if you can adjust or get softer valving on the shocks that will help the ride as well..

To give an example..Off road racers get a good ride over the hoop-de-doos but then look at how much spring travel they have..

Suspension travel (enough) is key to good handling and ride in my book..

Hope you get it sorted out..

OMT

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I have tried most all of it and now do what is known to work..

Thanks for the input. I guess I need to explain that the 3/4' travel is purely due to stiffness of spring pack. It,s not bottoming,and has room to move up a down but simply acts like the spring pack is too stiff. When work was done, I took apart both front and rear packs, cleaned them, and sandblasted all the leaves so I know they should move freely. Has anyone used the slider stuff that comes in rolls to put between the leaves? If so, did it help and how much? Any info will help , and I have to think with the traditional stle rod movement, there should be plenty of cars running stock style suspensions. I would just like to find out if hard ride is just the way it is, or if something is set up wrong. Thanks.