coil springs vs coil overs

[steves118]

I am still looking at options for my 68. i was wondering if there are coil springs available that would provide a good ride and work good enough to make an eb competitive . I think the plus would be cost ,you could have a bumpstop within the coil with no frame mods . any valvable shock can be tuned to work as well as any bypass shock .I am just looking at ALL the options .It would be easy to find and copy what some have already done and be ahead of the game of r&d.So i was just wondering what you think. I just had a chance to look at some old footage 70s stuff and the EBs looked pretty smooth .I know the stuff is better now so it is easier to get what you want off the shelf .do you think coils can give you all you need compaired to coil overs ?

[straightaxle]

We used a set of Wild Horses springs designed for an EB application for a couple of races, however our truck was a little heavy for them and this was before we had the adjustability of the bypass shocks. No reason standard springs can't be made to work, and it is a lot better to get something that can be pulled off the shelf. There are a bunch of sources for springs, including all of the Bronco parts sources as well as Deaver and National. In the old days there were a lot of guys that had the numbers for a bunch of production Ford applications (vans) that would also work. I can say that the stock spring pads will cause any spring you use to take a set that will make it bow when it is unloaded. This didn't seem to hurt the performance, but they will eventually break and should be replaced after every couple of seasons.

[chuck]

I ran my coils 4 years before breaking a spring bucket. The coils were still fine but I went to coilovers. When I went to coilovers I got 15" of total travel, with the coil springs I got 14", the diff. may be other things I fixed at the same time. My thinking is the coilovers V coils are not worth the price.

[steves118]

Chuck, if you had the option to make the change .if you did not have to pay .would you do it then ?

[chuck]

Chuck, if you had the option to make the change .if you did not have to pay .would you do it then ?
No, well maybe if someone else did the work. At the time my racer had a broken spring bucket which is a lot of work to replace and both spring buckets obviously needed to be braced up in some way. So my thoughts at the time was the work was about the same and coilovers would be much better. Turned out to be a lot more work, very pricey and they still do the same job. So all in all if I had to do it over I wouldn't spend the money. If I did install coilovers like on the customer racer we are building now my last choice would be king coilovers. I am installing a set of Revolution coilovers on that racer at the customers request, the install is as simple as installing shocks. 3 externally adjustable compression and 1 rebound with no external tubes, very clean.

[steves118]

AAAAH, i will just wait until after this weekend to give this any more thought.