front coil springs

[grant mills]

After reviewing all the postings on this site, I have ordered a set of coil springs from O'Reilly...SP08055...which are a match to MOOG CC655....which have been touted as a very close replacement for the original front springs. Given the problems with cross border shopping, I am hoping to get them in about a week.  My question  is: do they require any spacers? The photos of side to side comparisons I have seen make them seem just slightly shorter than the original...or does it not matter and  I just get a bit more rake.

[mfg]

On 8/15/2024 at 5:56 PM, grant mills said:

After reviewing all the postings on this site, I have ordered a set of coil springs from O'Reilly...SP08055...which are a match to MOOG CC655....which have been touted as a very close replacement for the original front springs. Given the problems with cross border shopping, I am hoping to get them in about a week.  My question  is: do they require any spacers? The photos of side to side comparisons I have seen make them seem just slightly shorter than the original...or does it not matter and  I just get a bit more rake.

Please keep us posted on how you like those new springs… I’m in the market for a new pair of front coils myself!

[Stefan B.]

On 8/17/2024 at 3:43 PM, mfg said:

Please keep us posted on how you like those new springs… I’m in the market for a new pair of front coils myself!

Hi Ed,
I would like to ask you a question concerning a Speedster I am considering to buy. Sorry to jump in here in this discussion, I tried to send a direct message but that did not work. Would it be possible that you check if the car is in your lists and give me some info on it if it is? - also via personal message or e-mail (stefan.bergsmann@chello.at), whatever is best for you. The VIN is 7165903, Body No. 6H K7 1507 and Engine No. P 16935. As far as I know the car was owned by a Mr. Gene Upstill before it was sold to Europe ~2017.

It would really be great if you could help me on that. As I am new in the Stude realm and am located in Europe, it is not so easy for me to find the right info and sources.

Again apologies for jumping in and also for bringing this up here in the AOAI - I simply did not know how to contact you on a different way. 

Thank you & best wishes from Vienna,
Stefan
Vienna, Austria

 

[grant mills]

Well, after many months I have almost finished the front suspension. It has been a litany of incorrect parts and learning new(old) things about the car. First, I was lucky to have a cousin in Vancouver with a business that had a warehouse in Washington state (and a US bank credit card) O'Reilly will not ship to Canada, nor will they accept credit cards based on non-US banks (That means my American Express from a canadian branch is not accepted) Once received, the local shop did a good job of replacing bushings on A-arms, king pins and bell crank. Now, a few words of caution.

If you have a 1" front sway bar, I have only found 2 sources for replacing the bushings. One is Dave Thibeault who, if I understood correctly from our conversation, make a bracket that fits the old Avanti support but accepts the new style of bushings which are too small for the old bracket. Essentially a smaller bracket. The other is Dan Booth (at Nostalgic) who sells bushings that fit the old bracket, but had been modified by Avanti after they stopped installing 1" sway bars and moved to 7/8" bars. Since Avanti had a large lot of the 1" hole bushings, they glued an insert into the hole to bring its size down. I went with Dan's bushings and ground out the insert to bring the hole back to 1" (dremel w/ steel grinder works slow but effective) It easily slide onto the sway bar (using plenty of liquid dish soap to smooth the bar). I am now waiting on a refund for the "wrong external sized" bushings I mailed back to "Avanti International Inc." over a month ago

Second word of caution: Any aftermarket front shock is NOT going to fit. DO NOT believe RockAuto when they advertise their replacement shocks for any pre-86 Avanti. Those shocks ALL have a 3" long base plate (end to end) while the centers of the two stove bolts that hold them to the lower A-arm are 3.5" apart (the Lark chassis). They cannot be secured. I had order KYB shocks and dealing with their support desk, I was told they have NO shocks with a wider plate on the bottom. "Gabriel" automatically acknowledged that I asked them about this issue and would get right back to me....but crickets. In the end, RockAuto acknowledged the problem, indicating that many other Avanti owners had complained about the same thing and offered me a refund (and paid return shipping) even though I was months over their return date policy. Given problems with returning parts across the border, I decided to build brackets  for the lower supports. Using 3/16" flat steel, I cut eight 2" pieces from a 1" wide piece. I then gouged out a U shape from one side, approximately 1/4" deep in four of them. It is about 1" wide and tightly surrounds the flange of the shock. I next drilled out a 3/8" hole beyond the cutout and ground away the metal to join the two. The other 4 simply had a 3/8" hole drilled at one end. Now I will (and hopefully it will work having just finished the grinding an hour ago and still wanting to do a little more precision filling) attach the extensions to the 3/16" thick shock supports. and use the other single hole plate to act as a clamp, covering both the new extension and the base of the shock. It may be that there are suppliers that have front shocks with the wider support base, but I have been at this all summer and have gotten tired of the parts misunderstandings I had with some suppliers.

I strongly recommend Dan Booth at Nostalgic and am thank full to Dave Thibeault for suggesting him as an alternative to his product. I had easily ordered from Nostalgic years back but had mistakenly thought they had retired.

[Footer]

Grant, have you reinstalled your swaybar, and how big of a battle was that?  I have a new 7/8” for the front of mine, and my new bushings need to be opened up also. Mike

[mfg]

Wow! you went through heck on that lower shock mount…. but kept swinging until you resolved the issue… Well done!!

[grant mills]

Mike, If you have a 7/8" sway bar, the bushings from Dan Booth (Nostalgic) would be a perfect fit if you are using the original brackets, and would need NO opening up. They are meant for the 7/8" sway bar. Where did you get the bushings such that they are too small (assuming about 3/4" hole diameter)? Remember that the correct bushings may seem tight, but liberal use of dishwasher soap on both the interior hole and the sway bar should make things much easier.  I have not yet installed the bar, but I have the interior bushings in place and it is just a matter of making some supports to hold one end of the bar as I first work on the other end (cross my fingers)

If you are stuck with too small bushings, I used a dremel w/ steel cutting rod at the end of the shank. It was small and started to make cavities along the interior. I would then switch to the largest grinding stone that would fit in the hole (or to the largest sandpaper drum) again with the dremel. This larger stone/sandpaper would smooth out the hole. I needed the high speed to be able to cut out the rubber quickly. The steel cutting rod does fast removal and the larger grinders do proper, slower, finishing work. An electric hand drill just does not have the RPMs that are needed to cut the rubber.

[Footer]

Grant, thanks for the info. So did your car already have the 1” swaybar and you are just replacing the bushings?  I’m going from the stock 3/4” to 7/8” front on my 83. I know the new bushings are tight but haven’t tried gooping them up. Anyone have any experiences or thoughts on going with bigger bars?  Mike

[grant mills]

Mike, I have just finished getting the sway bar attached, completing the front end work. I have attached a picture of the lower connection  for the front shocks. As I was adding a spacer to help clamp the extension, I needed longer carriage bolts as the original ones looked to be too short. My mistake there was using carriage bolts from a local hardware store. They turned out to be grade 2 and when I tried to torque then down, two snapped.  I corrected that by getting 4 grade 5 bolts from a blot supply house. They easily took 15 ft.lbs. of torque, I just hope it is enough. ( I would have attached a picture but Microsofts latest upgrade broke the picture download for my flip phone)

As to the sway bars...There is a technique that took me 3 days to discover and an half an hour (or more accounting for coffee breaks) to apply. (Note: dish soap makes an ideal lubricant for slipping bushings along bar. ) After slipping two bushings onto the bar and pushing along to their interior location.....put the two end bushings in their brackets and loosely connect the bracket to hold them in place.  Next, having lubricated the interior hole of the bushings and the ends of the sway bar, push one end of the sway bar into its bushing as far as it will go. It should stick out the other end of that bushing. Then take the other end of the sway bar and push it into its bushing.  There should be enough clearance for that to enter that other side. NOTE: when the sway bar is complete, the two ends do NOT extend out the end of the bushings and seem to leave about 1/2" of the  end bushing open at either end.    Now put some support under the centre of the sway bar until it is held a few inches below its position. Put the brackets on the interior bushings and get them into the back slots (If you put only one side in the slot and then loosely connect it, you will be unable to get the other bracket into its slot)  With both in their slots, raise the bar an inch or two to hold the brackets in place (to keep the sway bar from pulling them out. At that point you can work the brackets one a time to insert the bolts to hold them in place. I used a small bottle jack and a short piece of 2x4 to lift the lower end of the bracket until the bolt holes aligned....A metal drift pin helped align the holes and a ball peen hammer was used to knock either the sway bar or bushing/bracket for final alignment from side to side.  I've tightened down the bolts hard by hand (with lock washers), but have no idea of the suggested torque for these.....If anyone knows what they should be, let me know

[Footer]

Thanks Grant, sounds like a procedure. Coffee always helps!  Mike

[grant mills]

to MFG:  Now that the installs fro front springs and shocks are completed, I feel that the front end is just a bit higher than I am used to....of course this can be explained by the fact that the rear leaf spring have all the curve of a carpenters level. But I had also moved to 195/75-15 all round from the 225/70-r15 rear and 225/60-r15 front that had been on the car for 25 years

[mfg]

On 10/28/2024 at 7:10 PM, grant mills said:

to MFG:  Now that the installs fro front springs and shocks are completed, I feel that the front end is just a bit higher than I am used to....of course this can be explained by the fact that the rear leaf spring have all the curve of a carpenters level. But I had also moved to 195/75-15 all round from the 225/70-r15 rear and 225/60-r15 front that had been on the car for 25 years

Thanks for your opinion on the new front springs….Sounds good!

Good move on the tire size too… I’ll bet your Avanti will handle/feel much better!

[grant mills]

I had moved to the 225/70  on the rear end to get my speedometer back to accurate. The tires on it when I bought it were so small that the speed read 10% higher than I was actually going. It took a 10 mile measured distance (provided by the highways dept.) to show me why I never got any speeding tickets. I liked the more aggressive look/width of the B.F. Goodrich tires, but had to put a smaller circumference on the front to keep from rubbing the inner fender well on sharp/fast corners. The newer suspension may have corrected that problem, but I really want to be able to need only one size of spare. I still need to fix the steering control valve to get the handling I remember from days of old.