This morning I cleaned-up my rear leaf springs in order to assess their condition. I'm in the process of deciding whether to replace them or have them re-arched (or de-arched, as the case may be). The springs hold their arch well, so their is no need to add a leaf or anything like that.
Also, both springs are arched equally, so neither side is high or low, which would require correcting. Below, left is a shot of both springs lined-up; they are basically identical which makes it difficult to see the one in the rear. On the right I measured the distance from the floor up to the bottom of the spring where the mounting bolt is. The distance was 3 5/16". I'm posting to the
forums at 311s.org to see what height others are running. The competition springs lower the rear of the car a bit, so I may actually want to have these de-arched an inch or so. We'll see.
After measuring I took the springs outside to wash them. Like everything else off the underside of the car, they were pretty filthy. I wet them down and wiped on some
Simple Green.
I used a wire brush to loosen up some of the dirt and then scrubbed the springs with scouring pads and more Simple Green. I've found it important to continually wash away the dirt as it comes off the parts.
The bottoms of the springs (which are actually mounted upward on the car) were equally dirty.
But they actually came clean enough to read the part numbers on the springs. I cleaned up the edges the same way.
I was pleased at how nicely the leaf springs cleaned-up.
