The Ford Barn - Home made spring spreader - More versatile than I thought.

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Home made spring spreader - More versatile than I thought.

The links to the pictures have been broken in the great PhotoBucket debacle of '17. I have re-added the pics, but they now appear as attachments at the end. Mart.

I needed to fit a stock 40 style spring to a 40 style axle, so I made up a simple spreader.

I used 25mm square tubing with a 2mm wall thickness as the main body. I then used some threaded bar 20mm diameter to make the two pushers.

I heated and flattened the ends of the bar to make a sort of blunt chisel blade type point, increasing the width due to the flattening.

I left the screwed rod as long as I could to give the best overlap with the tube and therefore the greatest strength.

It worked really well. I then made some clamps (from odds and ends) to enable me to spread a reversed eye 40 style front spring. I made a new centre piece of tubing, from the same material, and had to cut a couple of inches or so off the insides of the threaded bar. the overlap was still plenty.

Again, it worked really well.

Still with me? Now here's the thing.. I assumed this spreader could only work on the 35-up straight springs. I was wrong. I just used it to remove and refit the reversed eye 32 spring on my roadster.

Because the spring was reversed eye, i used the clamping pieces previously used on the 40 front spring.. Using the clamps, with careful positioning of the clamping bolts allowed a straight shot across the back of the axle, and the spreader ends nestled snugly and safely in place.

It occurred to me that even with a non reversed eye spring (stock type) using the clamps (normally not necessary) would allow the use of the simply made spreader bar.

Ok? Obviously without pictures I'm lying, so here are a few from the refitting of the spring to my hybrid 35/32 axle (32 ends on 35 bell centres.)

Attachment 1:
Basic tube centre, Showing threaded bar left as long as possible.

Attachment 2:
Detail of the flattened ends.

Attachment3:
Showing the improvised clamps. bolts are 10mm 8.8 grade

Attachment 4:
Showing the spreader nestled in the adapter clamps - note the long end of the bolts positioned to ensure the spreader end cannot slip out.

Attachment5:
Showing the straight shot achieved across the rearmost part of the axle.

Attachment 6:
General view of the spreader doing it's thing.

Attachment 7:
And another. This is in the spread state. You can see that the length of threaded bar sticking out is very short.

As always there are the usual get outs - This works for me, you are welcome to use the ideas presented here at your own risk. Make sure the rig you make
is strong enough.

I can hear the "don't use all thread" people chiming in as I type. Well, if it is big enough, part sticking out is minimised, the part inside the tubing is maximised and there is no bending moment (it's a "straight shot"), then it will work as I have shown.

in summary I found the tool simple to make, from stuff I had around me, very useful for the intended applications (straight springs) and was pleasantly surprised that it would work equally as well on the curved rears too. Usage of the clamps normally required for reversed eye springs make it's use on curved springs possible.

Cheers.

Mart.