reversing spring eyes at home

i had a Model t spring but needed to reverse the eyes to drop it down a little bit. so here is how i did it, not really hard just takes a while. it took me a little over and hour

first you have to undo the spring pack, best way to do this is take a c clamp and place the clamp next to the alignment bolt an tighten it down, then remove the nut, bolt and spring clamps. then you can slowly remove the c clamp. this way it doesnt pop apart and and take any by standers out. then take the lower spring with the eyelets and lay it on somewhat smooth and flat part of a concrete floor. take chalk, soap stone, or a marker and trace the shape of the spring onto the floor, its hard to see but look close and you can see the outline

then take the spring and measure off 1 inch increments on the spring. then place the spring in a shop press and start in the center flattening out the spring on your marks. here is a pic of one side started laying next to the out line.


keep working the spring until it is pretty flat

now you can begin to reshape the spring back wards, which will reverse the eyes. take it slow and dont over bend the spring or it will just make more work. go back to the outline on the floor often to see where you need to bend

once you get the spring to the shape of the out line you can reassemble the spring pack, just reverse the process of taking it apart

and there you have it, a little elbow grease and you have a cheap reversed eye spring. this is how it used to be done by many hot rodders and still works great.

Very cool Mike. Nice tech.

could you do it on the front springs to?say like 46 ford car.

yeah, any leaf spring will work

A while back I was thinking of this on the back springs for the 49. I'm just to chicken to try it.

it is pretty safe as long as there are not cracks, i have even done one that i had to shorten, where we heated the ends and re rolled them, i was pretty nervous about heating it up, but a few old timers told me it would never break. which i believed due to me working on a car that had a heated and re rolled spring that was wrapped around a phone pole, broke the rim, rear end but the spring eyes still looked great

cornfield customs wrote:it is pretty safe as long as there are not cracks, i have even done one that i had to shorten, where we heated the ends and re rolled them, i was pretty nervous about heating it up, but a few old timers told me it would never break. which i believed due to me working on a car that had a heated and re rolled spring that was wrapped around a phone pole, broke the rim, rear end but the spring eyes still looked great

A rosebud and a nice garagemade tool to grip the eye and un-roll and re-roll is how I did mine... I am here to tell you that those spring packs do have some energy to them when they let go.. lets just say I am lucky to have all my teeth, hell my skull.. My welding helmet, and overhead light did'nt fair to well..... But this is a story for a dumbest thing you ever did while working on your car thread...lol It only hurts when I laugh....

LRS30 wrote:

cornfield customs wrote:it is pretty safe as long as there are not cracks, i have even done one that i had to shorten, where we heated the ends and re rolled them, i was pretty nervous about heating it up, but a few old timers told me it would never break. which i believed due to me working on a car that had a heated and re rolled spring that was wrapped around a phone pole, broke the rim, rear end but the spring eyes still looked great

A rosebud and a nice garagemade tool to grip the eye and un-roll and re-roll is how I did mine... I am here to tell you that those spring packs do have some energy to them when they let go.. lets just say I am lucky to have all my teeth, hell my skull.. My welding helmet, and overhead light did'nt fair to well..... But this is a story for a dumbest thing you ever did while working on your car thread...lol It only hurts when I laugh....

Sound like a scary second or two Ryan.

Steve it sounded like a bomb went off in the garage, lisa came running out and looked at me and thought I had lost my mind cause after I realized what happened I started laughing uncontrollable...Yhea it could have been real bad.... luck was on my side..