[Bluepen]

I've got my '46 Chevy Panel that I'm working on and have a problem with the front springs. I had asked a question before about the way it was sitting and was told the springs were to tall. Well I'm going to go back and redo the front this weekend but I can not find anyplace that tells me how tall they should be to start with. This is what I've got now, '46 Chevy 1/2T Panel truck with a SBC 350/400TH, Must II front end with stock type control arms. Does anyone know how tall the springs should be in this set-up??

Thanks folks
David

[39chevy]

Dave, does your front springs bow in a little too much for your liking? Mine does this also and they feel real stiff also, It seems to me that they need to be cut down a 1/2 of a spring? I'm toying with doing this with mine, but not to that point yet, still working on brakes etc, If you fix yours let me know, thanks, Dana, I also have Must II front end!

[trees]

David, here is how to take the guess work out of the problem. First, get all the weight on the front end that will be there when the panel is finished. Some of this may be guess work, but you can get close. Then you need to find out how much weight is supported by the front suspension. Having access to wheel scales helps here. Now you set the lower control arms parallel to the garage floor with no springs installed and measure the distance between the upper and lower spring mounting surfaces. This is the proper ride height. The kits I have installed have had pre cut rods for this operation. Regardless, you then compute your unloaded spring length by using the weight the spring must support. Springs are rated by how much weight it takes to compress it one inch so if your front end weight is 1600 pounds, then each spring will support 800 pounds. Now your decision is to pick the rate you want. In this case I would pick a 375 pound spring that is 2 1/8 inches longer than the distance you obtained above.

I would not cut a spring unless I knew what rate it has.

There is a lot of details in the Knowledge Base if you want to do some searching.

Trees