Decambering leaf springs

forgive my stupidity, but what exactly is decambering leaf springs? i understand camber on wheels, and i have leaf springs on my car, but they arent angled.

1980escort - are you running multi springs? If so, have all the leaves been decambered?

My experience was that all the leaves needed re-arching to reasonably match the new shape of the main leaf. Reassembling the spring before doing this resulted in the shorter leaves just pulling the main leaf back into the original shape. It may depend on the original design of the leaves though.



froggy, I don't know why that would be the case unless the new 'length' of the spring has an effect. Since the arch is flattened the distance between the eyes does increase and so the shackle angle will change. Perhaps if done to the extreme this causes a problem with location? As you say, I'd expect greater problems with excessive lowering blocks which provide greater leverage for the wheels to 'wind up' the leaves.

tuning leaf springs is a lot more sophisticated job than most people give it credit for. it seems people think old tech.=stupidly simple, which isnt really so.

theres quite a few things to consider before you start jumping up and down on them in a press to get your leaf-spring ride lower.

first, not all leaf springs can be decambered. the majority or problems of tramp and weird handling come from springs becoming negitively cambered. given a lot of leaves sit nigh on flat to start with when laden (irrispective of how curved they look when sat on the workbench) it means you cant really flatten em out much, if it all, without it ruining the handling.

secondly, making a leaf spring flatter effectively softens it. the more curved it is to start with, the more you soften it by flattening it out. I will often add leafs to a spring pack to compensate for this.

if you are decambering, you should do all leaves accordingly, otherwise you will have conflicting spring rates within a pack which will make the suspension feel 'notchy' in use. it will also wildly effect ride height, it wont give a 'true' drop.

another big cause of tramp and driveline vibration/noises is incorrect pinion nose angle, you can manage to curse word this up with either blocks or decambering, but 99% of people who do either simply don't bother checking if theyve adversely effected it.

likewise, how many people change their shocks to alter their new spring rate and lower ride height, and depending on how its been achieved, shorter shock stroke. few to none.....

the best combination of lowing for most leaf spring cars is a combination of blocks and decambering, not one or the other exclusively.