Spring forensics

[1LowToy]

I too my front suspension apart today. The truck only has 57k miles in 30 years. It's unknown if it was parked on uneven ground over the years but I did find the left front setting about 1" higher than the right. For that reason I'm buying new springs to cut down before I put it back together.

What I did find was that the left front spring was not quite seated on top and the right spring was shaped slightly different on the bottom coil. The first two pics are the left an right respectively showing the shinny marks of where they were seated. The third hopefully we can see it, the bottom end of the right side coil is closer to the next coil up than the left spring. I believe this is causing the leaning on my truck. Hopefully new springs and trimming them I'll come out with a level square

Just to pop in another question. Will I need shorter shocks with only one coil cut off? I may only go a half a coil to begin with and if it sets well I'm going to weld in a small secton of coil material to the lower control arm as a stop for the spring.

Real open to comments, especially if I'm screwin up my

[DREAMER1]

Don't kno how low you wanna go, or wut you're aiming for, but personally I cut one complete revolution on my coils an it dropped approx 2 inches. The shocks are still good. An my rubber stops serve the purpose. Of course I wanna go lower in the future, which I will get different shocks, keep my springs and use dropped spindles. But that's in the near future. But for the time being one coil is good enough for me.
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[Mike Bradbury]

If you are going to buy new springs why don't you just buy lowered springs instead of cutting new ones. Some times the cut springs tend to not seat as well and pop and creek a bit in the perch when going in and out of driveways or other dips

[BLE 'BURBAN]

SPRING fORENSICS ARE KINDA COOL,
BUT MID SUMMER FORENSICS ARE HOT!!

[1LowToy]

Hard to admit but I sold a pair of lowering springs because I didn't know how much they would have lowered it. The adds I reviewed showed 2", 3" or 1 to three inches, so I sold them. Now finding I have one side 1 inch higher than the other maybe I should get a pair of new springs to start out evenly and thinking I would have more control over how much it was lowered by cutting them. As for the springs groaning and popping I was going to put a spring stops or guides on the lower control arm so the spring can't shift.

I have 3" lowering spindles and as for what I'm looking for is about 4.5 inches. Wheels are 15x8 ralleys with 255 60s. Any more than 4.5 drop may be a problem.

[N2TRUX]

Lets start by clarifying the lean. Almost every 73-87 GM truck that left the GM plant had a lean of some sort. The later years "seem" to be less, but it was still common.

With that clear, I feel your issue was compounded by a spring that was improperly seated. If it were me, I would cut half a coil and see what happens. If you seat them properly and still have some lean, cut a 1/4 turn less on the low side and try again.

The concern over advertisers saying 1-2-3" of drop addresses the issue of springs being old and sagging. If you have a set of really worn spring and add an aftermarket lowering spring you might only see 1 or 2" of drop. If you have springs that haven't sagged much you might get a full 3" of drop.

My experience has been it's better to cut a spring in smaller increments to get the the drop you want. It requires more work, but its a lot easier than trying to add a piece back on the end of a spring thats cut too much.