Chopping stock springs
04-23-2010, 01:35 PM
#46
I toyed with the idea of chopping springs. It's old school.
Another old school trick was to heat them up and collapse them to the length you wanted. They may lose tensil (sp) strength and become brittle and break. (I heard of someone welding on the little step on a Cessna 172 spring landing gear that eventually broke, OMG)
But, old school again, you can heat them up with an electric welder compress them to the height you want. If you do do it, let us know.
(or you can buy some used H&R's for about $200 and do it the "right" way)
Another old school trick was to heat them up and collapse them to the length you wanted. They may lose tensil (sp) strength and become brittle and break. (I heard of someone welding on the little step on a Cessna 172 spring landing gear that eventually broke, OMG)
But, old school again, you can heat them up with an electric welder compress them to the height you want. If you do do it, let us know.
(or you can buy some used H&R's for about $200 and do it the "right" way)
01-14-2020, 06:13 PM
#47
8th Gear
Join Date: Jan 2004
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I now wonder if cutting 1/4 a coil front and half a coil in the rear will give the car a nice 1/2 drop with proper stiffens very close to stock.
01-15-2020, 12:21 PM
#48
A coil spring is like a torsion spring, in that by varying its length it will become weaker or stiffer. Shortening a coil spring will increase the rate of resistance. Building a fixture and putting the spring in press, heating a portion of the coil till red and compressing the spring enough to reduce the length at full extension may do it. Be prepared to reduce the bump stops and check for coil bind at max compression. Also take this as an experimental attempt to gain what you are after with a cheap and dirty method, realizing the integrety of the spring may be affected.
Not much middle ground with this method, very hard to get the height correct, and no going back. Cutting a small section at a time at the top of the spring wold be better. 1/2 coil or so isn’t going to affect the spring rate much, although the spring rate won’t go down. 1/2” is acceptable to try, Lots of on and off, if you cut too much it’s not going back on.
