sperkins

OK guys. Here are the pictures. The bolts on it now measure 7 inches. What to do?

stingraymaniac

You need to change the bolts,ore the spring to a softer one
seems like if you change the bolts they are gonna hit the rubber on the tires,what size of tires are those?
maybe 8" bolts can be used.

sperkins

The tires are coming off. They are Huge! 275/60/15. Will be going with 235/60/15 BFG Radial T/A's.

stingraymaniac

Its a 9 leaf spring you got there i have a 7 leaf spring on mine,that thing is pretty hard,not sure if its the original one...
if you are getting new tires then just change the bolts and it should be ok

Duke94

Must not be the original spring since the fasteners still have gold plating on them. The Van Steel web page shows 3 different springs and use an 8" bolt. I have a nine leaf on my 78' which is way heavier than your bumper car. Don't know if the # of leaves has anything to do with ride height.

SanDiegoPaul

235/60 is too small a tire. It's way too short ... 255/60 is the right size, or a 225/75

fugawi

have you jacked up the rear off the floor? if so .you have to drive it to get the rear to settle to it's proper hight...it only takes a little drive to do this. then recheck the rear...

GTR1999

The aftermarket springs are junk,sorry but true. I've used a few and and all required 8" bolts and then the nuts are right down to the end of the bolt. Bring the nuts down, put the weight on the car and drive it forward and check. Maybe the spring wasn't properly loaded too,but that usually will break the ears on the cover.

fl_rider

Caterpillar has 9/16 x 8 inch bolts that will drop your car down where it belongs.

My spring from Midamerica did the same thing to mine.

The bolts were under 4 dollars each.

sperkins

I'm trying to set the car back to the original ride height. I've checked and the body mounts look normal, and the spring has a good bend in it. Most cars I've seen, the rear spring lays almost flat? I don't get it.

TFitz

i just put mine back together and now i am worried i have the spring loaded right. breaking the ears i want to avoid what do i need to do to set the load?

Steve's74

Not only that, but it looks like the car is stripped down (top and mechanism, bumpers, etc). If you've removed several hundred pounds of weight from the car, the back end is going to ride high no matter which spring is on it. I would suggest waiting until you have the car reassembled and then roll it back and for a bit to see what you have. I think it's going to be difficult to tell what spring you have there unless you see an aftermarket label somewhere.

Steve

74 vert

Here's a picture of my old stock spring. Take a look at the ends of the steel strips, they appear different than yours. The bolts were stock, with 235/60 tires on rally wheels.

I'm presently running the dual mount from Van Steel and I'm happy with the result.

Blue Juice

Sperkins,

Bolt length clearance problems;

Think of the bolt as part of the wheel, apart from slight compression of the rubber donuts, it travels up and down with the wheel.
This means you can put longer bolts in without worrying if they'll hit the tire as the car moves up and down on the suspension.

The other bolt movement is sideways where the spring hangs off it. As the car squats down, or leans over when cornering, the spring will be compressed and therfore move towards being more straight. This will cause the end of the spring to move toward the wheel/tire. However, at the same time as the spring moves out, the wheel does too, because of the radius movement of the lower arm. The wheel moves less than the spring, because the spring is lenthening as well as swinging in a radius, but the difference is minimal and again not likely to affect your bolt to wheel clearence problems.


Ride height problems;

Back to the bolt being part of the wheel. The wheel sits on the ground (except when the car is up on its favorite axle stands again!!!), so the bolt is a fixed point in relation to the ground.
The spring takes the weight of the car, if the weight remains the same, the spring position and shape remain the same.
If you took a view of the spring, with the car sitting normally on a level suface, then by magic, took away the wheels and put blocks of wood under the two spring ends, the spring shape or postion would not have changed.
So we want to lower the car, so we want to bring the two ends of the spring closer to the ground. Replacing the blocks of wood with smaller blocks, or lengthening the bolt to let the spring ends sit closer to the ground in relation to the wheel.

Make sense??

And as metioned previously, 255/60/15 tires are correct. Always go bigger wheels/tires, lower ride height and and more power, and you can't go wrong!

Cheers,
Douglas

theandies

NC C3

No it's not...I run 235/60's and they are the perfect height. 225/75's are gonna be too tall IMO.

mkflanagan

I run 235/60/15 and I just replaced my spring with a new 9 leaf and used 8 inch bolts,It dropped the rear about 3 inches.

79VetteMike

Take the air shocks out...

sperkins

I was wrong. The rear tires are 275/60/15. The only weight taken off the car in the back include the rear bumpers, deck lid, and doors. Car was way high even before these were removed. I'm not so sure I can even drop the rear spring any further as it is. Look at the angle of the half shaft in my picture. Now compare it to the picture that 74 Vert posted. Oh yeah, and those are not air shocks.
is going on here?
Also, changing to an 8 inch bolt only gives me another 1 inch of adjustment. I need at least 3. What about this. Does that upper link bushing look really really fat??

onaqwst

20"s with 45 series....9"wide rim/tire..... i think my spring is a bit weak?