Traditional Kustom on a shoestring budget: Back underneath

September, 2010- OK, back to business. When we last left out beloved little basket case, she had a new door, but the front suspension was still entirely disassembled.

The orders from Paragon Corvette and Chevy's of the 40's (yeah, they have a lot of stuff for 1950's Chevy's, too) are in. The onr last thing to take care of are the front springs.

I stated earlier that I wanted to lower the front of the car now. Of course, I saw two options: buy springs that will lower the ride height, or buy stock springs and cut them to lower the car.

Enter another valuable member of the extended crew: The Wizard. OK, he's really my brother-in-law, but he has a sickeningly broad base of knowledge. He retired from Delco as an electronics engineer, but what's totally cool about his base of information is that he's fascinated by all science, and in addition to learning concepts, he has great common sense for application of the concepts.

On one of our conversations, he told me that in his studies of metallurgy, he found out exactly how GM made coil springs. They were NOT, as many think, made from spring steel. They were formed from cold rolled steel, and then shot peened. The shot peening work hardens the surface of the spring to give it its' springiness. It therefore follows that if old springs are not physically bent, but have lost some springiness dur to age and surface rust- they can be re-shot peened, and they will have the same springiness that they had when they were new.

So- armed with that new knowledge, I pulled out the die grinder, lopped one coil from the springs, smoothed the edges, and it was off to the machine shop to have them shot peened.