I need to do a little leveling of my 40 and plan on taking 1 leaf out of my front springs and installing it in the rear spring pack. (I do notwant to change my height0 Anyone have luck reusing thier old spring center pins (if they are long enouhg) or what can you do instead of ordering online and paying high shipping costs?
go to lowes or home depot and in the nuts and bolts section, in one of the drawers they sale some black/grey allen head, but rounded bolt that is PERFECT for center pin. good luck.
Dan,
I made some "new" spring packs out of the stockers I took off the '40. Wanted to use them on a trailer project. I just bought spring pins at my local CarQuest store. They had them in several diameters and lengths. IIRC, they were about $5@
HTH
we're joking here right?! postage on 3 oz? making them from all thread? I hope it was gr. 8 all-thread because standard allthread is not graded. Maybe the softest bolt on the planet. It really sucks to shear a center pin on a hillclimb. They're about 1.00~1.50 at a spring shop.
Send me an address , I'll mail you a pair. Badass' solution is good, the socket head capscrews are usually gr. 8
Are they really under that much stress? The u-bolts clamp the springs to the spring perch which is, what, 4-5 inches long? In order to shear that bolt wouldn't you have to have some pretty extreme axle wrap?
I don't plan on wheeling it that hard, but if the consensus is they will easily break then I'll replace them.
I've sheared 4.
I always drill out FJ40 packs to accept a 3/8 pin like the FJ60. If I have a serious truck that gets a lot
of abuse like the ARCA cruisers we used to run I go to 7/16
Granted , if you checked the torque on every u-bolt before every jaunt off road, made sure they were over 100 ft/lbs, you would probably never shear one, but realistically, who ever checks them?
I've sheared 4.
I always drill out FJ40 packs to accept a 3/8 pin like the FJ60. If I have a serious truck that gets a lot
of abuse like the ARCA cruisers we used to run I go to 7/16
Granted , if you checked the torque on every u-bolt before every jaunt off road, made sure they were over 100 ft/lbs, you would probably never shear one, but realistically, who ever checks them?
Stock FJ40 pins are very thin and deserve some beefing up. Napa has a good selection in the blue bins, even my branch Napa has them. They are made by Rockford and if your Napa is a local one, they may have to look them up in the Rockford book. I really like the 7/16 pins and the heads are 5/8, which fit the holes in Ruffstuff perches and spring plates perfectly.
One other thing-7/16 bolts with allen socket heads make excellent spring pins. And I believe the Allen socket bolts by convention are a very high grade bolt, above grade 8. You will need to drill the spring pack which can be a bit of a pain.
I'll take your word that they do shear, but at what point did these pins shear? Middle of the bolt? At the head? Just wondering where the force is concentrated...
they shear at the perch , usually under acceleration load, and the axle tube drives forward on the spring. Sometimes it's very apparent other times it may only slide a 1/2". The last pin I sheared I'd been driving on it god knows how long. One day I noticed the square rust patch, that develops between the spring perch and spring, was about a 1/2" exposed. I sheared a pin and didn't know it. The ubolts
kept it pretty close.
I watched Tracy Jordan shear 2 simultaniously at the vernal rock crawl when he was still driving a leaf sprung cruiser
WOW. Didn't know this was going to cause such a controversy. I just asked because I like to do things myself and come up with different solutions than just buying something online. IF I can go to the hardware store and pick something up on my way home from work seems like a much better process than ordering something.
On that note, I know all-thread sucks when it has any type of push or pull force on it. A friend had a really nice dual T-case set up that had great fabrication work to make them twin stick. BUT, the guy that made the linkage ran out of his normally used shifter extenders and used all-thread instead. First run out the all-thread sheared off just switching between gears without a load on the engine.
I like the rounded Allen bolts. I'll pick up 4 3/8-24. I swapped in an add-a-leaf in an old CJ years ago and can't remember exactly how I did it, but I know I removed the spring from the rig. I would think that as long as the frame is supported with a jack stand and the axle below the spring has a jack stand, I could use 2 C clamps on the springs and loosen the U-bolts. I unscrew the spring pin and let he C-claps do the work to separate the springs evenly until all the pressure is off while lowering the axle. Once the pin is removed, I could take any spring out I want. Replace the new Allen center pin and use the jack to lift the axle and tighten the C claps up to secure. Sound about right?
Psshaw. Old wives tale. I've never replaced, nor broken one. They hold their torque. No issues.
Now you're going to come back with some crap about special threads, blah, blah, blah.
They're bolts.
We've got two 1946 Willy's Jeeps that we've had since they were new. They've been abused as tractors for 60 years, rebuilt every way from Sunday, but they still have the original u-bolts.
Psshaw. Old wives tale. I've never replaced, nor broken one. They hold their torque. No issues.
Now you're going to come back with some crap about special threads, blah, blah, blah.
They're bolts.
We've got two 1946 Willy's Jeeps that we've had since they were new. They've been abused as tractors for 60 years, rebuilt every way from Sunday, but they still have the original u-bolts.
Luck runs out. U-bolts work forever in my experience. The jeeps have been taken apart and reassembled dozens of times, at least. In between they tow around 3 ton grape gondolas, broken tractors and trucks and pull out apple trees with chain.
Why are they different than other bolts? Do you replace head bolts every time too?
What I'm saying is that the 100 footies you torque them to does not stretch them beyond a certain point, and once they're stretched, they remain constant forever. It would take way more force than you're exerting on them with the nuts to break them in the way you're thinking.
You are fortunate to live in climate where things apparently do not rust.
Having worked in a climate where you can listen to things rust, I do not share your same conviction on this topic. I have installed hundreds of leaf springs in trucks and can count on one hand the u-bolts that were able to be removed with an impact gun, and could even be looked at as a ‘trail spare’. The rest were removed with a torch.
or you can get grade8 large diameter bolts and use an industrial lathe to turn them down to exact specifications like I did stronger than stock no welding point of weakness and accurate down to the micron unlike that chepo cap scew someone suggested
this allowed me to make a spring pin that is long enough to be used on a stock spring with a ccot leveling block without drilling out the leaf spring. it is made at larger diameter for the exact thickness of the plate then goes to stock size the rest of the way down the spring pin
stronger than stock no welding point of weakness and accurate down to the micron unlike that chepo cap scew someone suggested