Broken top leaf spring on lifted chevy with 44" boggers???
 

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seeing if you guys could help me out...........

I have a big lifted 1989 Chevy extended cab with 16-19 inches of total lift and 44" boggers..
This is how I purchased the truck and the truck isn't completely finished.

Anyways the truck has been sitting in our garage since last summer. It's a Florida truck so not Rusty.......we just sold our house and are in the process of moving ,so we pulled the truck out and drove it out front to are house because Saturday we are moving.

My husband gets out of the truck and noticed the truck lower and leaning on the front driver's side. He looks and sees the middle area of the top leaf spring is broke in half?????

There are no shocks on the truck yet because the mounts aren't on yet ... however we know the truck was off-roaded a bit with no shocks before we bought it.

Today it was just driven about 150 feet in the grass.....that's all!!
Sorry, we have a lot to learn and are trying, but does anyone have any idea why it would have broke????
I will try to add pics .

Most likely because trucks were never intended to be lifted that high and by the time you get to 12" of lift in a leaf spring, it's bent in a "U" shape and utterly useless as a spring since you would need a 2' long shackle to compensate for how long the spring would grow as it flattened out with suspension compression. You basically have a piece of shit that may as well have I beams for "suspension".

The thing is....the arch in these springs isn't bad. I have seen much, much, worse Arch's on much smaller trucks......... regardless, unless I was just unlucky.......I know trucks like this are driven all the time without the springs breaking.

I would guess the springs are either bent beyond what a useful spring would be and lacking proper support or they were not tempered properly. Most likely both. This is why most big stupid trucks these days are linked with coil springs or coilovers.

EDIT: Now that I can see he pics, I would say it doesn't have nearly the lift you originally said. There is a bit in the what the hangers were dropped but those springs look more like a generic 6" or 8" lift. Looking at the break, I'd guess they were not tempered right or they were abused.

It was probably broken before. Pull the u bolt plate and try to get a PN off the top leaf. Get a new spring or just lower it and get some different springs. Who ever had it probably skyed it out!


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So you don't like big stupid trucks I see lol. Thanks for the response :)

Ok thanks! That was my next question.......I had no idea how to figure out what springs are on it and how to replace them.......we aren't really sure what the next direction is that we are going with the truck, but definitely want to get that fixed.
Right now my husband is working on the interior so my 3 boys can ride in it .

I know the people we bought it from didn't do the work on it either....they also bought it this way.
We bought it from Florida and had it shipped to us in central new York.

See my edit in the above post. And no, I outgrew the whole big gay truck thing a long time ago. Too much time spent laying under trucks with dried mud falling in my eyes whenever something broke.

Also, looking at the broken spring, that spring has been broken for a long time. It looks like there may be salt on it, which would accelerate any corrosion, but that break is clearly rusted through on both pieces with no visible shiny metal. That means it's been broken completely long enough for it to rust to that extent.

Yes, just saw your edit And had a feeling you didn't see the pics yet. What looks to be salt is actually phosphoric acid from last fall that wasn't cleaned off.
I get what you are saying now though.

try actually looking at the pictures, the springs have maybe 7-8" of arch in them, hardly u shaped. half the lift is coming from a front spring hanger drop, that if you actually look closely seems to be built properly and even has multiple gussets on it.

for a dumb big gay mud truck this one looks built better than most you would see in the booty fab thread

The phosphoric acid would remove the rust so the spring most likely broke sometime between when it was applied and when you found it. I personally would go through the entire truck before I put my kids in it as it all looks a bit sketchy. The tire rod is bent, it has a unnerving stack of shims on the front axle and the U-bolts don't look to be the correct size to fit the axle tube. To me those are red flags that whomever built it did the typical redneck bullshit that focuses more on being cool and seeing how much mud they can get their truck covered in than safety or logical engineering. Just my .02

The pics weren't there when I initially posted, I'd guess they were edited in in the two minutes between me posting and the edit being posted. Try reading the thread. :flipoff2:

Thanks, I appreciate that! Although we didn't build it, we definitely saw some real hack jobs when we were looking to buy a big truck.
It's kind of hard because everyone has there taste and we know a lot of people don't like big trucks, however......we obviously do!. My husband has done many things from redoing 4 wheelers, dirt bikes, wrecked gsxr 1000, Even did an ls7 441 in a Camaro SS that made 655 horsepower.and more! Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to learn much about these lifted trucks other than the basics.

This is the last thing on his list he has wanted to do since he was 13.
He is almost 41 now ,and loves monster trucks, truck pulls etc.

We definitely plan on doing that after the interior which should be soon minus are delay of moving.
Those were also all things we were going to go over and did notice when we got the truck here.
I'm guessing someone tried running a tree of some sort over because if you look at the front bumper, you will see thats dented in the same spot where the tie rod is bent.

How long is the main leaf from center of bolt to center of bolt? Can you post a picture of the shackle angle?

How's it going Corey?
I will measure it tomorrow and get some picks of the shackle angle. I would do it tonight but there is no light where it's sitting.

:flipoff2:

Measure the length of the springs to see which ones you will have to buy. 73-87 1/2 ton Chevy truck front leafs I’m assuming they probably are. 6” or 8” ones. That’s what I’d consider the most common for building big mud trucks. Order one and try it out, go from there. Only downside to buying someone else’s project is you don’t know exactly what all parts they used unless they give you a list wrote down

We need pics of your husband. :D

:barf:

I must of missed something????lol:confused:

Ok, I got some measurements from eye to eye......I wasn't sure if I should measure straight across or follow the arch ,( Assuming follow the arch) do I did both.

I got 49" straight across and 51" following the arch.
I did notice something new......the front rear shackle on the driver's side is at a different angle then the front rear shackle on the passengers side.
Not sure if it happened when the spring broke, but I just noticed it.

Hopefully you can see in the pics...if not I can take more, I just didn't want to crawl around in a rain storm.
https://i.postimg.cc/nszT3KzL/IMG-20...-165955972.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/mPTmHWWC/IMG-20...-170005173.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/hXMp8ZKw/IMG-20...-170023393.jpg

This last picture is the opposite side front passengers. That front rear shackle is coming downward and back a little.....the other side with the broken spring is way back as if the spring pushed or moved it.


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im betting those are rear chevy leafs(1973-1987) put under the front by the previous owner

Would that be a bad thing?

no not bad its a pretty common swap

https://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/chev...-resource.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl59jGpZypM