Narrowed Front Ends And Torsion Leaves

[horizontallyopposed]

So this came up when discussing with a friend who just narrowed the front beam on his 54 a total of 5 inches \"It's stiff as hell\" he said.  So I explained that when you reduce the length of the torsion leaves, the relative spring rate goes up as you remove that length.  He's tried removing two leaves and said it's much better.  So my question is - is this normal practice?  My 3\" narrowed beam seems pretty bloody stiff so I was wondering if I should pull a leaf.

[jim martin]

just a note -
my beam is narrowed over 6 inches with all the bars in there.
try bouncing the car with the shocks disconected you will be amazed.
i thought mine was way too stiff only too realize its firmness came from the dampining in the shocks compression.
for me i like it stiffer because with a very low car it help the nose from diving when entering driveways etc from the street.
good luck

[silas]

is he running shocks & towers or were they cut off when the beam was narrowed?

i would shy away from removing leaves. it's an old trick that was used before we had all the other parts to do a proper lowering job.

from what i've heard, removing leaves will only make the other leaves that are left in weaker and more prone to breakage.

if he really wants to run shocks, he could fab-up some shock mounts to the inner panel or somewhere near the gas tank mounting hole.

[HeliMike]

i narrowed my bj beam a couple years ago and left all of the leaves in it and it rode pretty good for a hammered beetle. If you're using the standard lenght KYB's you can cut the top sleeve off of the top of the shock and remove the rubber stopper to allow it to travel more. The only downfall is the shaft is now exposed and will cause the shock to wear prematurely i think. Cheers...

[James Buchan]

Here is a pic of a rear shock that has been opened up (like what Gutter was talking about)