The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop Front Leaf spring Flip drop? 51 chev

You might want to talk to a professional spring shop and consider having "mono-leaf" springs made (front and rear) for you. This as the name implies would mean you only have 1 leaf in each spring but that spring would be made to handle the weight and force factors of the AD truck. They mount just like the original springs but the axle sits lower. It has been done before...by several and there are some out there for sale but as I recall only for the front end and they're very costly. Patrick Dykes (of the now-gone Patrick's) in Arizona had these made and was selling them but he's gone now. I drove his pickup after he installed them and it handled and drove just fine. Lowered it by about 2 maybe 2.5 inches and there was a measurable weight reduction. If you only lower the front end you change some things...caster angle being the most important of those things. And if you just remove a bunch of spring leaves from the original AD springs you risk causing those to break...you can remove some leaves and be ok but you won't ever be able to run the AD springs as a mono-leaf spring safely. One thing we discovered with Patrick's springs was that the drag link finally sat parallel to the ground...which is the best situation if you're looking to reduce bump steer. If you have new springs or springs in good nick, your drag link will angle from front to rear upwards about 8 or so degrees. The higher up on the arc you get, the less of a bump it takes to cause your front end to want to change direction...you can see that in my drawing attached. Good luck!