Thread: Rebuilding Model T rear spring?

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I am rebuilding a 21-25 rear model T spring and wanted to know if there are supposed to be a liner in between each leaf? If liners are needed, where could I get them?
Sorry for a dumb question but I never rebuilt a leaf spring before.

I have a couple of the same springs apart, and there hasn't been anything but spring leaves. I've also toyed with the idea of plastic sliders or liners as well. Think I'll experiment, and try strips of plastic sheet from a kids toy Crazy Carpet snow sled. Don't know what type of plastic it is, but it's tougher than nails, real slippery, and cheap. You can buy them for 2 or 3 dollars. Well, at least you can where there's snow! Sniper

Stock springs were metal to metal. Couple ways to improve on that. First way is to buy some spring liner material from someone like Speedway. It comes in widths of 1 3/4 and 2 1/4 I think, with a lip on each side to hold it in place. You cut off the length you need and slip it between two leaves, then move on to the next one.

Second way is to drill a 5/16 hole in the end of overlapping leaves and insert a slider button that is made of some plastic type material. This creates sort of what Posies sells with their Superslider springs. This is my favorite way because the plastic liner bunches up on the edges and looks funny IMO. You will burn up some drill bits putting those holes in the spring because of the hardness of spring steel, but it is a cinch after that, the buttons just pop into the holes and stay in place.

I did that to the front and rear springs on my T, and am very happy with the results. The plastic also keeps the paint from getting messed up on the spring from metal scraping along as the spring moves up and down.

The buttons are available from Chassis Engineering, Bob P put me on to those. Here is how I did mine.


Don

http://www.chassisengineeringinc.com/page7.html

Thanks for the info and link Don.
I was suspecting that they were metal to metal originaly because I saw no sign of any liners while taking the spring apart.
That button does look way better than liner in between each leaf. My front spring has liner and I thought that it looked terrible.
I'll have to go to the local rod shop and have them order me up some of those buttons.

Thanks again.