[peters23]

I am rebuilding this car, which has been in storage for close to 50 years, and figured I would start with something comparatively easy like the rear suspension (WRONG!).

The rubber bushings in the rear leaf springs were tired (as well are the springs, will be replacing those too). Well most of these bushings are somewhat special, and NLA, with the exception of the front spring eyes, which seem to take a somewhat standard Dayton RB-7 bushing.

The rear spring eye could also take the RB-7 bushing, but we would need to fab up some shackles and through bolts. I made mine from some 1-1/2" by 3/8" hot rolled steel, and retained the original 3.25" spacing. Bolts were 1/2" grade 8, cut from longer lengths, and re-threaded to keep most threads outside of the suspension. The heads are welded to the shackles so they won't rotate, and stiffen things up.

A new bracket setup will be required at the rear frame location which I fabbed up. This is a bolt in replacement for the original (rivited in), but has a larger bore for the RB-7 bushings. These were a PITA to make but I got them done. This would be a great project for a metal printed and firing or cast part, but I don't have that equipment. Alternatively it could be fabbed from solid aluminum blocks.

The critical part with the brackets is boring the hole for the bushing, which should be around 0.001" to 0.002" smaller than the OD of the bushing casing. I went a bit over on one and had to add some metal back in.

It will be a while before I get this all put together, but I figured there might be other daring folks that use some of the ideas here.

[694.1]

Those rear bushings are truly extinct. I chose to go with the earlier metal bushings available through California Pontiac.