Well a real disapointment here. I replaced the front suspension on my 70 Cutlass convertible, 350, NO A/C. I installed some beautiful black vinyl coated front coil springs from NAPA last fall. It looked like it was sitting high in the front, but it's lite in the front - no engine, core support, hood etc.
Plopped in my freshly rebuild 350 & tranny afew weeks ago, and we're still too high in the front.
I did a little research and found out that these coil springs were intended for an A/C equipped car. You wouldn't think that would add much weight, but when used in a non-A/C like mine, its still 2-3 inches too high.
To make matters worse, trying to find the correct front coils for a 70/350/non-A/C/conv is turning out to be a real challenge. Nothing from Moog/Summit/NAPA etc.
Does anyone know of a reasonable substitution for this coil spring. I'm trying to keep the original height/ride, within reason.

 

I'm sure there is someone here that can give you a Moog spring part number that has worked for them for your car but here is a good vendor.

http://www.eatondetroitspring.com/

 

You really need to know the specs for the springs you currently have in order to find one that will give you the ride height that you desire. Moog has spring specs on their web site so if you can find the specs for your springs you can then compare to the Moog chart to see which springs would give the ride height you want.

With that said, here is some spring info I was given years ago and used to decide which springs to use on my car. I decided upon the 5536 springs due to the higher spring rate and lower installed height:

> 5390 small block - no AC
> wire diameter = 0.650"
> load height = 11.000"
> load = 1952 pounds
> rate per inch = 336 pounds
> free height = 16.808"
>
> 5382 big block - no AC, small block - AC
> wire diameter = 0.660"
> load height = 11.000"
> load = 2066 pounds
> rate per inch = 360 pounds
> free height = 16.724"
>
> 5400 big block - AC
> wire diameter = 0.660"
> load height = 11.000"
> load = 2167 pounds
> rate per inch = 360 pounds
> free height = 17.004"
>
> 5536 442 small block - AC - heavy duty, 442 big block - no AC - heavy duty
> wire diameter = 0.690"
> load height = 11.000"
> load = 1984 pounds
> rate per inch = 488 pounds
> free height = 15.063"
>
> 5450 small block - AC - heavy duty, big block - no AC - heavy duty, -442 big block - AC - heavy duty
> wire diameter = 0.690"
> load height = 12.000"
> load = 1642 pounds
> rate per inch = 454 pounds
> free height = 15.616"

Here's what my car looks like with the 5536 front springs and 5409 rear springs and 245-60-14 tires:

P2250124.jpg