Spring steel

[RD400]

I am trying to find some to make leaf springs for a TLT. My proplem is I am not a metalirgest(?) and am having a hard time finding info. I'm not sure how to guess what lbs. rating I need.

I have been cruising the net and found a lot of sights that sell sping steel, I'm just confident on how thick of material to buy. Any thoughts or ideas would be a lot of help.:mrgreen:

 

[BigJay]

I read online that the steel used in the steel strapping that goes around pallets and stuff being shipped on pallets makes good spring material. I have no experience with it personally, just read it somewhere.

-Jay

 

[jason]

Why not just buy Juggernaut springs?

 

[Ace]

I've pondered this before. About the only way to cut it will be grinding wheel. You could shear it but you better have a good shear. Not sure about tin snips.

Personally I'd get thin stuff and stack'm like a real truck leaf.
How to mount them though? To bend the coil on the ends I think would crack the steel maybe anneal the ends and bend and then heat and quench back to hard... Good luck drilling a hole thru, maybe with a carbide drill but I dunno. Could also try a diamond burr. Other would be to spin a brass tube and use lapping compound to "grind" a hole thru. I've also read a tip to use a regular old nail, cut off the head and use a drill press to spin the nail with a lot of pressure and burn the nail into the spring metal. The idea is to use the friction heat to locally anneal the spring steel. They said to back up the steel with wood to insulate the metal from the drill press table. After it cools you can supposedly drill the annealed spot with a regular drill.

like Jason said... Buy some Jugg springs and call'r good.

 

[mnstrbetle]

The Jugg springs are a great idea but if you insist on creating your own then one good source of spring steel is the recoil starter spring on old chainsaws and weadeaters. The spring steel on an old weadeater is typically 1/4 inch wide and when you start stacking 'leafs' upon one another it is possible to make the leaf spring as stiff or as weak as you want. Spring steel is a pain in the nect to drill through and it is hard to bend without snapping but I think if you heat it up you will be able to bend the 'eyes' on the end of the main leaf.

The metal banding that was earlier suggested isn't really all that 'springy' and tends to be way to maluable to create a leaf spring, it's just going to bend to easy and will weaken over time...recoil starter springs are the way to go.

Just my .02

 

[wheeler]

i made my own leaf spring once out of strapping steel that holds bunches of 2X4's together. it worked quite well, only problem was that i made it to short. the eyes were hard to make. i managed to clamp the end to a piece of 3/8" rod and using alot of heat i managed to hammer it into an eye. i put a few more pieces of strapping to build up the thickness a little but i was quite happy, easy to cut with tin snips. but all i had was 3/4" wide strapping and its way to wide to look scale at all.

 

[chafey]

most leaf springs are way too stiff,even jugg ones take 50 pounds to flex them