Thread: Making your own rear Shock brackets?

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Go to the boneyard and choose any full-sized car with leaf springs. Remove and purchase one of the shocks and both spring pads where the shocks mount. Modify the pads if you have to to fit the old Chevy and bolt 'em in. Fully extend your donor shock and measure the center to center distance. Now fully compress the shock and measure the center to center distance. Adding these 2 distances together and dividing by 2 will give you the installed length of that shock. If the shocks mounted behind the diff housing on your donor vehicle, place a brick behind each rear tire and use the bricks to hold a string in place. Run the string from the left rear brick over to the right side at the center of the shock mount at the spring. Now raise the string up, keeping it taut, to a point that equals the installed height of your shock. That will be the centerline point for your upper shock mount. Now repeat for the other side.

If the shocks mounted forward of the housing, put the bricks in front of the tires.

When you have the mounts fabricated, go down to NAPA and get a set of shocks made to fit your donor car and you're good to go.

P.S. I guess it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, the car needs to be at ride height sitting on the tires to do this properly.