Front Coil Spring specs

Greetings!

I've got a question about the front coils. I haven't really been able to find the diameter/length of them, or what the stock rate is.

I've got a broken spring on the front driver side of my Buick Electra Estate wagon (yeah, it's not a caprice, but the same basic chassis and more people here make for better information sharing).

By my rough measurements with a tape measure, it looks like the front coils from an Astro (late 90's I believe) are about 5.5" diameter, as are the broken spring that I have. It's fairly apparent that the astro uses a thicker wire, so the spring rate is higher, but my main question is on the length.

Does anyone know if the Astro springs are approximately the same length as the ones on a caprice/electra/delta88/parisienne? Or even better yet, a good source of information? Looking around at new parts, I haven't seen them showing what the actual physical measurements are on any of the websites I've checked so far.

Thanks for your time and patience!!

--sarge

If you go to a spring maker's site like Moog or Monroe, they might list the stats on their springs.

Be careful about swapping around springs without knowing how they compare to stock springs. Some of them have flat ground tops or the bottom coil is made to register on the lower control arm. They also may be of different spring rates from side to side and your car will end up not sitting level with different springs in place.

Bob

If I changed them, I'd end up changing both sides, not just the one that's broken.

I actually looked around on Moog's site already, and I've been able to drill down pretty much by car make, model, and engine, but no measurements available.

This is basically on a wagon that was going to be junked out after being in an accident, especially since a lot of things are broken on the car. I asked my uncle if I could use it for rallycrossing (like an autocross/soloII/gymkhana without the pavement) But, it still runs and drives, and I'm just skimming other parts off of other broken stuff my uncle has sitting around to make it hold up to the beating. I rallyX'ed it once before, and it was a blast, but the broken spring really sort of makes it hard to handle sometimes.

Here it is in all it's glory. Before I got my hands on it, it basically ran into/onto/through a post or something I think, broke the spring, messed up the shift linkage, and chowdered some of the wiring on the fender, and sliced up the tire. I took a torch and cut out the inner fender as high as possible, just to not rip into the tire, and it still rubs, but not on a sharp edge anymore.
http://sharkpork.com/gallery/d/929-2/480130850_8497a85ec4_o.jpg

I've seen other posts saying to use the spindles from S10's for lowering purposes, I'm going to check out the spindles on the astro to see if they might actually raise the front of the wagon. That would be very helpful, but also a lot of work in the cold.

this is basically for pure fun, and zero roadgoingness, so I might just leave mismatched height springs on it just to make it look funny.

Thanks for the mention of Monroe, I haven't checked them out yet.


--sarge

Well, as of last night, it's verified that the Astro/Safari springs will work.

they have the same mounting seat style on top and bottom (they're not the flat machined kind, and are the same diameter.

The Astro/Safari springs seem to be approximately ½ coil shorter than the original ones. The spring wire itself is noticeably thicker (I didn't have my caliper handy to measure the difference).

This will most likely actually raise the front of the RallyBuick™ though, since the spring was broken, and a couple coils were overlapping, making the Astro/Safari spring actually taller by an inch or so.

So Saturday morning will see me getting up early and driving down there and yanking the other side too, so I've got matching springs in the front, and putting on new shocks and swaybar endlinks (after a test drive to see if the swaybar even needs to be hooked up again).

I'm still trying to find a 3.73 rear end though, none of the 3 junkyards within a 2-hour drive seem to have them at all, unless they're just too friggin' lazy to actually look, and are just blowing smoke..

--sarge

Well, here's an update:

I actually found the 'missing' broken piece of the spring, it was the very bottom half-coil, I found it in the bottom of the lower A-arm when I was cleaning it out to install the Astro spring.

After putting the broken pieces back together, and matching up the Astro/Safari spring, they are the EXACT SAME HEIGHT.

The only difference being that the Astro/Safari springs are a wee bit thicker, maybe a millimeter or two, thus a higher spring rate (which is what I want).

So, for those of us who like handling performance as much or better than straight-line performance, this might be an inexpensive way to increase that.


Happy Motoring!

--sarge

nice info
thanks.

now if you could find me the spring rates for an 85 camaro iroc that i cant find...
nvm
lol

well, I happened to be looking around, and ran across this quote, regarding an '82 Z28..


I found out that Moog will tell you anything you need to know about their springs--wire diameter, spring height, whatever--and I found two parts from them to try. One set was 780 pounds per inch and the other was 706 pounds per inch. I started with the strong ones, and the car was understeering badly in turns. I went to the other set, and after cutting off half a coil because my front end was too high, the ride was perfect.

I'm guessing that one's the standard, and one's the heavy duty, or something like that?

--sarge