Dear Vette Folks,

I was under the LT4 (1996 Collector Edition) today doing the brakes and draining and filling the rear end. I noticed some very slight and seemingly superficial delamination on the center area of the rear monospring, quite close to where it is attached at the centerline.

Is this normal or is this something I should worry about? I don't notice anything at all in the handling of the car, etc. The material which is lifting is on the surface, and there doesn;t appear to be any deep delamination or cracking. The car is never raced and generally driven pretty conservatively.

If I have to replace this thing, how tough a job is this? I'm pretty good mechanically, and I can see how the spring is attached, but I'm a little nervous at the thought of the kind of force involved with such a large suspension component (compressing it, etc.)

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.


[Modified by Tom Mieczkowski, 11:01 PM 7/23/2002]

 

I also have some delamination on my rear spring on my 90. All the delamintaion on my spring is ocurring on the drivers side and it caused that side to sag slightly. It was only about 1/2-3/4 of an inch and i couldn't even tell until I took it to the alignment shop to get it lowered. They told me that the spring would be fine for normal day driving, but that I shouldn't take it racing because it could fail under extreem cornering. But my spring has delamintaion about 1/8" deep so it's kinda severe.
I think that this is a common problem because my last 88 had the rear spring replaced at about 140,000 kms, just before i bought it.
I was told that it wasn't that big of a job (i know i know that ALWAYS what they say :rolleyes: ) But if was quite cheap to get a replacement only about 200 Canadian (thats about $130 for our US friends :cheers: ) And thats for the Z51 spring.

 

If the spring is starting to delaminate I would definitely think about replacing it in the near future.

While you always need to be careful when working with springs, replacing the rear spring is relatively straight forward (especially when compared to the front). Just take your time and be careful.

With the rear up on jackstands, a floorjack can be used to compress the end of the spring just enough to let you take the cotter pin and nut off the spring bolt. (I use a hockey puck or a block of wood on the lifting pad of my jack to avoid scratching the surface of the spring.) Also, before removing the nut, make note of the distance from the nut to the end of the bolt as this is what determines the rear ride height.

The jack can then be slowly lowered to take the load off the spring.

When removing the spring from the center mounting bracket it is important to note the spacer arrangement. The number and location of the spacers are dependent on the type of spring and suspension package on your particular car. I believe that there are some old posts in the archives that go into the various combinations of springs and spacers in detail.

Putting it back together is just the reverse: mount the spring in the center
and then re-connect one side at a time using the floor jack to compress the end of the spring enough to get the washer and nut threaded back onto the spring bolt. Once the nut is fully threaded back on the bolt you can remove the jack and use wrenches to adjust the nut back to the original position to restore the original ride height.
Only about a 1-2 hour job.

Good luck,
Mark



:cheers: