Bluenoser,

A spring shop could de-arch the springs you have. I think I saw another post that indicated your spring eyes were shot.

I have a spring shop making a new main spring for my fronts as we speak(type). It was cheaper than buying new ones. The spring shop will inspect the stack to make sure all of the rest are in good shape. Since I probably won't put on more a couple of thousand miles/year, I did not want to fork out $800 for new springs.

You might be able to get your old springs de-arched and also remove a couple of leafs while they rebuild the stack. A good spring guy should be able to tell you which ones can be safely removed. I did that on my last 41 too.