What are my options?

cut  1/2 of a coil out of front springs?

or...???

wheels will be the factory Turbocast IIs (14x7)   215/60/14  front, 235/60/14 rear   

thanks, gz

is the front really high? or is the low rear from sagging springs? they are 30 years old.

thanks for responding! gz

Mine was nose high, i cut 1 loop out of the springs, lowered about 1-1/2ins.

Heard that!

I too noticed my '79 Gt was sitting high and like you said, this was standard stance on most AMCs. Since I had the driver's fender off, the spring was visible. So I took my Dremel and cut off one bottom loop. Let me caution you that I did this with the wheel off and the lower arm hanging in mid air. This lessened the tension on the spring. Watch where you put your hands and especially your fingers. I had to use several cut off wheel but it did a fine job. When the loop cam off, I had to cut it in half to get it out. One loop was perfect! And it sat exactly where the original end sat in the perch. Did the other side the same way but with the fender on.

I had put 15" Turbocast wheels on the back so I needed a little lift so I added air shocks (here comes the naysayers) and took the rear up 3/4" just enough to get fender well clearance.

Hope this helps.

Later!

Mr. Ed

On the UnclJohn thing, did he mean 1/2 a coil, or as written, just a 1/2 INCH off the end?

thanks, gz

Makes the springs stiffer which makes them harsher and they extend less.

Also has a detrimental effect on front suspension geometry at neutral load.

Lowering plates avoid those compromises and maintain original at-rest geometry.

Full length weaker springs, more coils, smaller wire, less harsh, more stored energy, improved launch weight transfer.

That's how I understood it, but could be wrong, put used 6-Cyl Javelin Front Coils in my street strip AMX

and brand new Rear Leaf Springs, twice actually, over about 30 years...

So far, in my research, cutting springs may be ok, lowering plates may be better? 

Thing is, I have extra springs, I don't have lowering plates :)

thanks, gz

You tell me. How does this look?

Later!

Mr. Ed

 

Lowering the front of your spirit would raise your spirits?

 

[Be sure to tip your bartenders and waitresses...I'm here all week...]

 

With the Hornet when it was on the street I went to Javlin springs to stop beating up the headers, then when it became race only kept going to lighter springs as the weight came off. In the end I was using 4 cyl springs.

This may be option #3.

thanks, gz

anyway, I'm currently Evaporusting/refinishing my spare set of coils, since they're here and paid for, so may try that first. Good to know there are other options.  Thanks, gz

handling in turns is substantially affected by the rest position of the upper and lower control arms. on the few, earlier cars that i've put tpe measure to, at least, correct geometry is when the centerline of the lower outer balljoint/trunnion is at the exact same height as the inner arm pivot.

with unequal-length A-arm suspensions, camber varies in turns, a lot. chopped springs make the car squat, like it's in a turn, and will make it feel heavy and bad.

there's this idea that lowering the center of gravity improves handling, for fairly intuitively obvious reasons. but the net improvement isn't all that much, and building in bad geometry will do fgar more harm than the lowering will.

if it's just for looks, or for straight-line drag racing, it probably doesn't matter much.

Anyway, put them in, car sat nose high, a LOT! So, I got a set of new Extra HD Eagle rear leafs from Stengel Bros. in PA,, which they arched a 1/2" over stock, and installed them. car sits level, and looks good, about 1" higher than stock. The ride is a bit harsher, though not enough to bother me.

The front end was completely apart, so off to the alignment shop. They did not tell me there were any problems, and the car tracks straight. New shocks all around, NAPA brand.

One problem I noticed just a week or so ago, is that the poly bushings in the spring seat are getting squeezed out. (rebuilt spring seat from Arizona AMC). Don't know if this is a result of the (unintended) lift.

Also, the car does not like steering at full lock, don't know the issue there, related?

Otherwise , is a great car to drive, has Freakride subframe connectors, and feels as solid as a rock on the road.

So, back to the Spirit, new rear leafs?

Option #4. though the most expensive!

We'll take it one day/dollar at a time.

thanks for your input,  gz

billd did a better job than i ever could of describing the on-going complexity of mostly camber, but also toe, bump steer, shock, ride, etc relative to stock or "correct" springs.

i've also personally done a lot of stupid things to my cars, and was actually happy with setups that were... subpar is a nice way to put it. there's a lot of redundancy in there! many of the dumb things were done to my '63 classic wagon. i replaced all four coil springs with custom wound new ones from a then-local shop. 1" taller ride height and stiffer (forgot how much). i was quite happy with it. tall 15" pickup truck tires. that car did everything i wanted but handling, umm no. rode OK though. 9" grtound clearance!

but if you want to actually *improve* handling, like turning the steering wheel under power, it's actual effort. i learned the hard way that the place to start is with stock stuff in the exactly correct configuration, determine precisely wtf it is that is lacking, and change one thing at a time to measure the result.

(i used to scoff at factory tuning (spark fuel gears axle tires) and now know, damn, AMC did a good job! the compromises are about as good as you can get at what's there. of course real power increase allows for changes, etc. same with handling and drivability and especially longevity: stock suspension is good at what it's designed for).

i did some actual research and reading on suspensions for my current car (hardly bragging, for the first time in 40+ years of messing up cars). turns out very little change made a large improvement -- Shelby drop, so-called, for the same reason the Mustang needed it. while i've made a number of radical-seeming changes to the parts themselves (basically fabricating unavailable stuff) the geometry up front is 100% factory stock settings, *except* Shelby drop 1". and the new metal allowed me to get 1/2 degree caster and -2 degrees camber. same geometry.

https://sr-ix.com/Roadster/front-suspension/index.html#GEOM" rel="nofollow - https://sr-ix.com/Roadster/front-suspension/index.html#GEOM

at the above  page are links to a 2-D suspension simulator, with stock setup and my 1" shelby drop setup. you can drag the roll angle thingie and induce roll, and see how much the roll center changes, and in the WRONG DIRECTION! stock. AMC wanted grannie to go slow in turns by making the car feel like it would roll over! with the *sole change* of the 1" shelby drop, the roll center moves in the opposite direction, vastly improving where the mass grips the road. i can tell you that my car stays flat in turns and i have no roll bars and dont need them. (springs are stiff and air springs are inherently progressive).

i also learned, the hard way, and i admit by accident, how much of this car's understeer is built into the *rear leaf spring setup*. two things determine it: the height off the ground of front vs. rear spring eyes, and the canting of the springs inward at the front of the car, which had not once in my life noticed; eg. looking down at the car with x-ray vision, bird's eye view, the springs are not parallel, they point inward at front (in this chassis, far more than say a 72 hornet). it took me some time to visualize how this created understeer but it does -- and a lot of it.

the short of it is, when the car rolls on it's springs in a turn, the  inside wheel moves back a bit and the outside wheel moves forward a bit. small fraction of an inch translates into noticable counter steering. i discovered this by accident when i moved to a rigid wishbone system with a 7.5" mustang axle.

funny, the torque tube cars don't have this oversteer since no leaf springs. that's the geometry i copied because i knew how it worked in the bigger ramblers, because i went to all air springs for many reasons.

there's so much more design subtlety here i simply never imagined -- or bothered to look at.

oh one really nice thing about air springs...

i kept it stupid-simple. each spring has a couple feet of rigid plastic tubing that runs to a Schrader valve on each fender. i carry a nice double-action bicycle pump and tape measure in the car.

the first time through i set each spring air pressure so that for that corner, two fronts, two rears, the static loaded height was correct: the front lower arm pivots the exact same height off the ground; out back, the spring exactly 5" tall (half inch over half way through it's travel). then i made marks on the fender, the lower edge of ther styling "spear". (actualy i used a paint pen and wrote the height in inches).

now when i head off on a drive -- tomorrow AM, a bunch of us (pre-76 mostly sports cars) are out on a rally/tour (600 miles in 2 days, mountain and desert roads), today i measured each corner's mark, and tweaked ride height to the correct height, spot on. (the hoses and/or Shraders leak a tiny bit, like 1 PSI/month).

it's cheap (RAMBLER MENTALITY) but also light as possible. and compressor setups assume all air springs are the same, mine aren't. each corner is different! driver side front takes more air pressure for the same height (something like 37 left/32 right) due to uneven weight distribution.

that's funny cuz it's true! lol

i think there's mixed motives/goals in this thread. talk of lowering mixed in with talk of handling improvements.

lowering (or raising) an inch by cutting/clamping springs achieves the goal of lowering the car. it may add stress to all of the components, but maybe not enough to worry about. if you're after a lowered look then it's good enough.

but improving handling over stock is a different story. i can't imagine a single professional chassis tuner not saying: bring the car up to solid, like-new stock condition and tune from there, methodically, one thing at a time.

40 year old parts are worn parts. all springs under load sag. rubber bushings go bad even in low-miles cars. the rubber might not be popping out but i doubt it's concentric under constant load, and it's brittle and not compliant like new. 30, 40 year old "new" suspension parts the rubber is bad. 

i'd just be clear on what you want to do. i was very happy with my raised '63 Classic wagon. it rode fine, in that soft boaty-way a lot of that era did. and if the parts didn't last as long, well, i had no other 63 classic wagon to compare it to and it never failed me. i didn't autocross it, but i drove (slowly) on a lot of mild jeep trails and hundreds of thousands of highway miles. 

just be clear on what you're expecting (or be willing to enjoy your experiments. i did!)

1) get new rear leafs with a slightly higher arch - Con-expensive

2) fab up some drop plates - Con- have 1" wider front track

3) install 4 cyl front springs -Con- hard to find, not correct.

4) cut front coils 1/2 OR 1 coil -Con- improper suspension geometry

The car will be a weekend cruiser, not a DD or autocrosser, so a stock type ride is what I'm after.

After cleaning my spare coils, and a bit of headscratching, I have a hard time seeing how cutting just 1/2 a coil could alter things THAT much, Its really not that big an alteration. But we will see.

Thanks again, gz

you could 'cheaply'/experimentally use clamps to lower, and see if it does what you want. if it does, THEN chop half a turn. if not, pop 'em out and no real damage done.

something like that.

4) measure current geometry.  Without measuring, how do we know the lower control arm is at optimal height and cutting 1/2 coil will cause issues? 

If you are lowering the car, generally you should have higher rate springs and suitable dampers to reduce suspension travel; otherwise, more chance of bottoming out and hitting e.g. speed bumps with exhaust - especially if you have headers.   Need to consider the suspension system - not just one part of it.  Adjustable coil-overs might be a consideration ... but maybe out of your budget.   IIRC, the Control Freak front coil over setup has much higher spring rate than stock for better handling, but the adjustable dampers allow tuning so the ride isn't too harsh.

 

Hope this helps, RD.

The actual spindle shaft bolts onto the spindle assembly with 4 bolts. The reason you can lower (or raise) the car is by bolting the lowering plate where the spindle shaft once bolted on and then bolting the spindle shaft on the outside of the plate in another location higher up. It is impossible to do it without increasing the track width the thickness of the plates used.

Tom

I took a 64 Fairlane to the spring shop here in town and had them re-arch them. The guy asked me how much higher I wanted the car to ride and I told him 2" when I go to pick it up the car is sitting a lot higher than 2". He tells me me to go drive it and if in a week it hasn't settled down to the 2" lift I wanted to bring it back and he'll redo them. About 4 days later that car settled down to an exact 2" lift and never changed a bit in the next 10 years with a good running 408 Windsor working them. Cheaper than buying springs and you can get them adjusted with ease.

Tom

Thank you again gentlemen!

gz