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Hello All
Happy holidays and soon happy new year !
I have a question, i am rebuilding my vette, it is a c3 pace car 1978
Between each spring
leaf there is a steel liner
I have 9 leaf, 7 liners
I will clean the leaf and replace liners but
Do i have to put grease on the liners ?
Thank you for the help
I've never heard of the liners being steel. My 75 had plastic liners and the replacement liners that I bought were also plastic. I've read several different posts on using lubricant or not using it on the liners. I decided to put a light coating of anti seize on each of the liners before reassembly.
Hi A,
I see the steel 'liners' in your photo…. but don't think I've ever heard mention of them before!
???
I don't believe any sort of lubricant was applied to the plastic liners originally.
Regards,
Alan
Hello All
Happy holidays and soon happy new year !
I have a question, i am rebuilding my vette, it is a c3 pace car 1978
Between each spring
leaf there is a steel liner
I have 9 leaf, 7 liners
I will clean the leaf and replace liners but
Do i have to put grease on the liners ?
Thank you for the help
Thierry
Just some thoughts. The reproduction liners tend to me much thinner than the originals. You may want to consider reusing your originals all except the longest one. The liners tend to wear out towards the ends and you can cut down the liners and move them up one leaf. You can then purchase a single reproduction liner from someone like Wilcox, a forum sponsor. The one liner will go on the longest leaf.
The spring was painted with a very high zinc content paint originally. The zinc has very good lubricity and allowed the leafs to slide between the liners. The zinc is also a very good rust inhibitor. The closest I have seen to the high zinc content paint is cold galvanized spray paint. This paint is gray as the original and helps prevent rust. Any home improvement box store carries the paint.
If you do go with reproduction liners you may need to go with shorter spring plate bolts. Note that the reproduction bolts usually have thinner lock washers as well.
the std rear spring is a 9 leaf spring. The width of the spring leaves is 2-1/2 inches. Thin full length liners are placed between the leaves of the spring, and are painted light gray along with the spring. Optional spring FE7 has six leaves and is 2 1/4 inches wide. The black plastic liners for this spring are H shaped and are not painted.
The NCRS discussion board reveals a post : "The spring liners on your car were, indeed, made of metal and the metal was a high zinc alloy of some kind. It's a relatively soft material. The standard spring for 1978 was a 2-1/2" wide piece and all 2-1/2" wide springs used this zinc alloy liner. These liners were of GM #462589 and are long-since discontinued. I know of no reproduction, although this material may be used for other springs and may be available in the spring manufacturing/service industry. The FE-7 spring was 2-1/4" wide and used the black, graphite-impregnated polypropylene, "H" cross section liners which are, indeed, still available from GM."
Rear spring leaf liners
