wrote in message
...
I have a couple of cars that need to have their leaf springs re-
arched. One web site mentioned that the process that they use is to
anneal, reform, quench and temper:
http://www.eatonsprings.com/rearching.htm.

I have had leaf packs re-arched in the past and the leaves did not
show any signs of having been heated so I suspect that they only cold
formed them. I have looked a several web sites that mentioned
supporting the leaf between two stanchions and beating on the leaf
with a 2 lb or similar hammer. I have acquired a hydraulic press and
am thinking of doing the following: dismantle spring asm, make a
template of the current arch and what I want, gently bend each leaf,
working the entire length of the leaf till it has the desired form.
Spring would be constrained between the posts of the hydraulic press
so that the leaf could not fly away on me. Look at eh bottom of this
page at the picture of the “Mart-o-Matic (someone named Mart best as I
can tell) – I would do similar with my press.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/s...t=32681&page=2 I
am trying to not spend monies that I do not have to in this "near
Depression".

Your thoughts?
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A very long time ago my highschool friend took the rear leaf spring from his
'41 Ford coupe to be re-arched so the eye that held the shackle bolt was
'up' instead of factory down. This lowered the rear of his car about 1.5"
.. . . .He took it to the local smelter blacksmith shop and they used 3 men,
and no heat, to do this.
They made a soapstone trace of the spring on a large plate of steel. Then
they put a large Vee block on the floor, on top of a block of wood. One man
was on a sledge hammer, one had a blacksmith fuller (round nosed wooden
handled chisel type tool) and one held the spring. They started near an
eyelet on one end of the spring and they made a hit with the fuller and
hammer about every 1/2". They went the lenght of the spring and then
checked it against the soapstone trace. It did not take that many passes to
fully reverse the arc of the spring. They finally had an identical shape
that matched the 'trace, but the eyes were inverted. This should work on
just re-arching a spring.