Interesting.......

Instead of a conventional mineral oil, I'd suggest using a dry type graphite based lubricant between the springs.
I've used this in the past with heavy duty steel-on-steel applications (rollingstock).

Molykote I think it was called.
Went on wet, took a couple hours to dry & lasted for years.

Also - I know this sounds dodgy, but I wonder how well it'd work if you re-assembled your spring pack with a thin coating of some form of silicone sealant type product between the leaves?????
Would offer the same dampening characteristics as a neoprene type substance & should last well providing you chose the right product???

does anyone know whether john taylor uses rubbing strips in the new springs he sells. i assume he does.
Also are the rubbing strips fairly obvious to see when your looking at the springs.

Nick

Highly polishing the spring leaves by themselves is not a fix as they will quickly rust when placed back in service, but as part of an overall strategy, & you are right on the money. Do not let the springs rub metal on metal, & once you have them nice & pliable, make sure that the shocks are up to the job.

Just haveing a read through this and I gotta say it's very informative. I had a thought though Dodgeman, what if instead of chroming the leaf it was highly polished?

If the springs have become a little more compliant, the bottoming out problem may well be made worse, so perhaps a little more clearance will be required. How are your shocks? Nice limber springs will show up sub standard shocks like nothing else.

The greased springs are not really a permanant fix, but more a diagnostic procedure, I recomended a lighter lube, like oil, because it is intended to be temporary.

If you believe that spring stiction has been causing you grief, then you need to devise a rectification strategy. The simplest one is to simply replace the worn or missing rubbing blocks that the factory put there.

Sadly, i went to get some of these for my 200B wagon's springs, only to find that they have never been listed as a spare part, so i will need to pull a sample from my spare springs & go to a major spring place & see if they have a generic replacement.

If the part of the spring leaf that they rub against is worn & rough from being rubbed by the lower leaf, they will wear quickly, so smooth it out, or buy a lot of rubbing blocks

Ok, I greased my leafs. I didn't clean and sand everything, I just jammed a screwdriver inbetween to pry them apart and slathered them with a brush.
I don't have much suspension travel in back, so I'm always bottoming out. But, it does SEEM to have softened the ride a bit.
I don't know if its worth it, for me, to rip out the leafs and 'rebuild' them right now. I just wish I had known how important this is last year, when I had everything out.

Thanks, Dodge
Good tip

There is a manufacturing/supply company in Sydney called J. C. Lodowici & Sons. They manufacture and carry almost every thermoplastic available. You can get Teflon, Delrin, Nylon, Lusint etc etc in sheet, plate or bar stock forms from them if necessary.

Oops posted the above post twice. Sorry.

Another alternative is the military wrap concept.

In this method the spring is shot peened to provide spring rubbing-surface lube reservoirs. The assembled spring is then immersed in boiling heavy weight moly-grease for a time. The grease is then allowed to cool and solidify.

The grease impregnated springs are wrapoed with 2" wide hessian strip (over the grease) and covered with a thick gauge heat shrink tubing.

This type of preparation ensures maximum spring compliance and wear resistance while still being light. It only adds about 500 grams mass to the spring assembly.

The main disadvantage is the time to prepare and clean up the springs and the shot peening cost.

To all those that are going to try the lubed spring trick, Please remember that this is valid only if the rubbing blocks have worn away, or are missing, as this is when the leaves have full length contact.

If you still have servicable rubbing blocks, then these will separate the leaves a small amount & the stiction problen is confined to the point's of contact. There is no point in pushing lubricant into a permanant gap.

Remember also that this is a temporary fix, to be used for evaluation purposes.

I look foward to reading what you all find as a result of your experiments.

Hop
The nickname was "bestowed" upon me in the '60's when i was the only dedicated supporter of the marque within the hot rod clubs in my area. I have owned my 1933 coupe since about June 1967. Yes, i still have it.