I talked to them again today and they told me that after looking at the springs they realized that the passenger and driver side are different and that it won’t accurately determine anything if they just swap sides.
Well, what do they mean by different? I think among the members viewing this thread I can comfortably say that NONE of them have ever seen a Ford Bronco/F100/F150 coil spring that had a left and a right. They don't exist except in custom or racing applications. None of the vendors (including us obviously) sell springs with a left and a right side. Even stock height.
And even MOOG Cargo-Coils (which are probably the springs they were going to source for you) do not come in left and right.
Many passenger cars, and maybe even a few trucks over the years have had lefts and rights, but I've never heard of any of our vintage Fords, or the manufacturers of aftermarket parts doing so.
Maybe someone here has though and can correct me if I'm wrong.
If your springs were different it's likely that one is sagged more than the other. If there is a label taped to the coil with a left and a right, we'd love to see them for reference materials here.
And besides all that, wasn't the point of swapping springs from side-to-side actually to verify that was the case? How does he know that the "left" spring wasn't actually installed on the passenger side then? Or if it's leaning due to uneven springs, then that's EXACTLY what would have fixed the problem in theory. Jeez, seems more complicated than it should be.
They told me that they’ve triple checked it again and everything is installed correctly.
I wonder what triple checking, or even double checking they can possibly do without actually taking it apart and doing it right?
I asked the shop owner what he would do if it was his and he said that he would heat up and stretch the “weak spring” by 1” (the amount it’s uneven according to him) and then reinstall and test drive.
Too much work and cost and sketchy results. Not going to happen in the real world. He would actually have just bought new springs.
I didn't look at other sources, but we sell a new pair of stock height coils for $135 bucks. I bet his cost on a set of MOOG coils is probably in the $100-120 range. How much does it cost to heat and stretch a coil and not ruin it's rate from the heat? Heck, you're not even supposed to cut a coil with a torch because it ruins the coil! That's why the go-to tool for cutting springs is a cutoff wheel. Less heat.
And any equipment and labor time to stretch a coil probably costs that much or more per coil.
He feels like replacing the front springs would cause it to sit too high in the front since the rear springs are probably sagging also.
Then he's lost in the middle of this and not thinking correctly. He's correct about the possibility, but way off on whether it's a hassle enough to avoid or not.
After all the time and money spent on experimentation they'd have been better off with new coils and let the chips fall where they may.
It's a simple matter (and I think this has been mentioned before) to verify where the springs sit right now. Simply measure between the top of the axle tube and the bottom of the frame rails. The front should be near enough to 7" as to not matter. The rear will be near enough to 6 inches. That is "stock" (well, stock-ish) height and you can see from those measurements if your rears and/or fronts are sagged and by approximately how much.
If the rears are sitting at 5" then yes, putting new coils in the front might make it higher in the front. But with a leaf spring a very simple 1" block would take care of that in a jiffy. No guesswork on leaf springs.
An add-a-leaf would do the job too. But with all the money you've spent at a shop to have them do the work, the cost of new rear springs to match the fronts is not actually that onerous.
I realize I'm being pretty cavalier with your money, but it's true. At some point new stuff is worth it. If not, then stop-gap measures like blocks or add-a-leaves are perfectly viable alternatives. They both have their distinct negative aspects of course, but both are doable.
According to the Wild Horses YouTube video, it looks as though it might be possible to visually check to see if the bushings are installed correctly so that’s what I’m planning to do.
What degree bushings did you use again? With 4's and 7's it's pretty easy to see. The 2 degree bushings are a bit more finicky when it comes to visual clues.
But none of that is the point here at all anyway. You can get the bushings oriented correctly and still have installed them incorrectly. The whole point of this thread was not only to make sure that they were "oriented" properly for caster correction, but that they were "installed" in the proper manner so as to get them to cooperate and have your vehicle not lean do to improper technique. Not direction, but technique.
If they didn't do it just like we described, they didn't do it correctly. And most shops don't. It takes too much time to do it the right way and most of them don't even know there is a "right" way. They just don't do it enough, or if they do and have not run into the problem before this, then they haven't had to deal with it.
And most of them don't have time to hang out here on the forums to look up the minutiae of a small job that they know how to do by the book. And most of the books didn't tell you these little tidbits that we've learned from 50 years of experience.
We should not expect every automotive shop to be intimately familiar with vehicle details that went out of production 40 years ago. But I think you're getting at least a minimal runaround so they don't have to deal with something they think you're probably smoking crack on and don't believe that the customer can possibly know more than they do. Especially when it costs them money. As all this is doing.
Anyway, good luck with picking it up. But take a tape measure with you to compare the four corners of the apocalypse and see just how much things are off. And more importantly, where they are off.
And ask them before you leave just how they determined that the two coils were different.
Paul
