New rear springs hit rear frame on the back of Nova

[007dragracer2.0]

My cousin and I a few weeks ago put in a new 12 bolt along with some Cal-tracs on his Nova. We took out a Dana 60 (not needed for the street) and changed out the old mono leaf springs as one side was weak. We put in some multi-leaf springs from a '69 Camaro (same as Nova) got stuff all buttoned up and just left bolts kind of semi loose until the weight of the car was on the ground. We tightened everything inc the Cal-tracs and shocks. When I went to tighten the rear shackles I noticed the rear spring eyes were on the bottom of the rear frame and the shackles were all the way back, Huh. So now we are trying to figure out of we did something wrong as the car has 0 spring action in the rear setup this way. Cousin didn't want split-mono's on the street and this car will not be raced very much. The spring packs have 5 leafs in them, so what did we do wrong?

 

[Steves32]

Spring Type [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]	Average Leaf Count	Locating Mechanism	Axle Perch Style
Standard/Base	1 (Mono-leaf)	Smooth top surface with a bottom protrusion, locked in place by rubber speed-bump pads.	Shallow perches (~1 to 1.5 inches deep).
High Performance / Heavy Duty	4 or 5 (Multi-leaf)	Center-bolt protruding out of the top of the spring to mechanically lock into the axle alignment hole.	Deep perches (~2.5 to 3 inches deep).

Because of these differing perch depths and locating pins, factory mono-leaf and multi-leaf springs cannot be interchanged without a physical conversion spacer kit

 

[itey]

My father taught me the “moonshiner’s trick” of clamping the leaf tips forward of the axle when he and his racing buddies put some on a Hudson Hornet circle track car in the early 50’s.

Absolutely the best thing you can do for an early leaf spring Mustang or Camaro if you want it to remain flexible enough in the rear to handle well in corners too. Clamping the leaves increases the rear roll stiffness and has to be balanced with a bigger bar in the front to keep it from being loose.

For the Camaro and Nova with a lot of power a good trick is to use the mono-leaf for a main leaf, cut the front eye off the multi-leaf main leaf so the front tip is right under the front spring eye bolt and also use 2 or 3 secondary leaves. 2 on the left and 3 on the right, like Mopar Super Stock springs. The extra leaves are shortened or cut off behind the axle so the spring rate isn’t increased too much. The spring behind the axle makes the spring rate, and the spring in front is essentially a semi-flexible trailing arm.

Make solid clamps with 3/8” x 2” strap with two 3/8” bolts on each end as close to the springs as possible and don’t use the slippy stuff between the springs. This gives the strength of the larger main leaf with the axle wrap-up control of the clamped multi-leaf segment in front of the axle. A pinion snubber is a good thing.

This method is too simple to please some people but it hooked up the best on the pear waste the farmer spread to spoil the racing down on Lower River Road.

 

[1slow62]

Maybe needs longer shackles?

 

[007dragracer2.0]

Maybe needs longer shackles?

Bingo, that fixed it. Now we just have to get a 1-2" lowering block to get the rear height of the car right again as the shackles did raise the rear a little. Not a big deal.