To remove your leaf springs: 1. Jack up the back of the car so the tires just leave the ground. 2. Support the car by placing jack stands under the FRAME of the car, not the suspension. 3. Remove tires/wheels, and U-bolts that secure the rear axle to the springs. 4. Use a floor jack to raise the rear axle up off the springs, and support it with another set of jack stands. There should be no weight on the springs at this point. 5. Remove spring shackle bolts at each end of the spring.
Thats IT!...... I count 5 jack stand... two too hold up the car.... one to jack the axle.... and two more to hold it in place? Hmmmm…. I best be finding some jack stands…
You can't use a jack stand to jack up the car or the axle ... You'll need to use either a floor jack (recommended) or a bottle jack. Also, to support the axle, you can use blocks of wood (not concrete blocks as they sometimes fail). You should still support the car with good jackstands, and make sure you're working on a stable, level surface (concrete floor) and not out in the soggy yard. You can buy jack stands at any good auto parts store. Be careful and good luck! Sam
sounds easy huh? before you start cussin because you can't get the bolts out once you got the nuts off, spray 'em up with pam (non stick for cooking) and wiggle them front to back . they get kinda stuck in the rubber bushings so rocking them while you or a helper tugs on the bolts will make them slide from the bushings easy.
when you remove the leaf springs, what are you going to put in their place? ...frank...:bananaman :bananaman
So with that said…. I don’t understand how that will give me more wheel hop? I thought it would give me more bend in the leaf…. I also don’t mind if the car is lowered…
Ok… so maybe I have something else wrong… There were 5 leafs on this car when I got it and 4 sandbags in the trunk weighing in at 72kg….159lbs total… When I push my car… it jiggles from side to side? Is there to much weight in the back? And too many leafs? In other posts people talk about only having 3 or 4 leafs… and as little weight as possible. I really need to see a set of traction bars to identify what your talking about...
Wheel hop is the reaction of the torque applied to the drve line and rear end when you dump the clutch or hit the gas pedal with an auto trans. The drive shaft tries to twist the rear end upward causing the spring to also do the same. There are several cures for this involving use of traction bars, or ladder bars and shock absorbers also. Traction bars are most common on leaf spring cars and they consist of a long piece of square tubing with a plate on one end that takes the place of your existing spring u-bolt and shock mounting plate. On the other end is a rubber snubber that contacts the front of the spring under the eye or somewhere close. As torque is applied to twist the rear end up, the bar and snubber hit the spring and counteract this motion to "plant the tires " into the road surface. Cal Trac types are adjustable kind that work on a similiar basis but allow some degree of pre-load on either side for a greater amount of tire planting if one or the other is be loaded more than the other by torque. You should try and transfer weight and torque from the front to the rear of the car by use of shocks, springs and traction devices. To stiff or to soft a spring in the rear can affect all this, however if you look at the early 60's model Nova's, they had a single "Mono" leaf spring in the rear, and with traction device's mentioned before, did and still do, get good traction in racing etc. As far as sandbags, sometimes they work and mostly not, for keeping the tire spin down. Great for snow but trac bars are the only real cure on the street or strip. Side to side movement when pushing your car is usually low air pressure especially with slicks. Could be loose or worn spring bushings too. There are several web sites available that have theorys and pic's on the subject. More leaves is a factory cure for a little more HP and torque, plus holding up a backseat of kids or a trunk load of beer.
I was experiencing bad side-to-side roll also. In fact, it caused my tires to rub on the inside of the well, closest to the trunk. Poly bushings solved all of that. Scotty
