Front leaf spring perch

i built a frame out of square tubing, and need a leaf spring perch! i went on speedway.com and found one for round tube front end. does anyone make a perch for square front end? with out perch i cant mock-up front end or place my 300 I-6 in place!!!!!! please help?

Just make your own. All you need is a bottom plate with 5 holes in it and two side plates, plus one more plate with 5 holes to go on the other side of the spring and you are done.

I also have a square tube front end and made mine out of 1/4 inch plate. Took all of a couple of hours to do. Be sure to lean it back about 7 degrees plus a few more degrees if your car is raked.

Don

Thanks don, how do you know your hole pattern, size and distance Center to Center either across or diagonally? I haven't got the "U" bolts yet! Is that how you got your measurements?

After I posted that I found some pictures and remembered I actually didn't make my perch. I had an old Total Performance perch laying around for a round tube and I cut the round part off and used the rest of it.

Here I have the perch set up in the bandsaw with the proper degrees of angle set in it.



Here it is after I whacked off the unwanted portion.



And trial fitted to the frame.




But if I hadn't had this one laying around to cut up it would have been easy to make one as I described in my first post.

Don

Sorry don I see the pic a little better you used an upper and lower plate and hex head bolts not "U" bolts sorry

Yeah, I just used 3/8 grade 8 bolts (maybe 7/16, I forget). But if you use your U bolts as a pattern you can drill holes in the perch so they slip through.

Don

I have them on the shelf, actually sell quite a few of them.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330518665385&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

If you want one, call me I can save you $10.00 off the Ebay price.

That's a no brainer. For $25 it isn't worth making one and he even includes the bottom plate.

Don

Just a note....I have cowl steering and I new I would experance bump steer, so I set my angle to 9 Deg. Well 5 years of daily driving I happy to say it worked out great. With 8" wide front tires sitting still its a little hard to turn, BUT on the road it tracts stright as a arrow, I can take my hands off the wheel at 80mph and no wandering. if you ever rode a raked out Harley its the same deal. Have fun......Doug

Doug, why would you "know" you would have bump steer? We have some pretty basic primers for avoiding that monster.

New guy, I see you kind of shot yourself in the foot on this over at Killbillet. Hope you don't have name calling hissey fits here when you don't get the "right" answer.

Willowbilly3 said:

Doug, why would you "know" you would have bump steer? We have some pretty basic primers for avoiding that monster.

Click to expand...

Because the way I chose to set up my steering. look at my Rod and you might be able to figure it out using basic primers.

Sorry Doug, I'm not smart enough to find the pictures. I guess my point was, why not engineer the bump steer out before building if you were aware the design would bump steer.

I think Doug is indicating that cowl steering is inherently not a good design when it comes to avoiding bump steer. If there is not very much wheel travel, as is the case with most solid axle front ends, then the bump steer is tolerable.

I followed 'ol Dad Baskerville's primer on keeping everything parallel with the ground. Seems to work good for eliminating bumpsteer.
I also used rear wishbones from a 46. Since they are longer, I was able to keep the pivot point of the suspension and drag link at about the same point and keep them both traveling through the same sized arc of travel.