Doug Johns's Journal

Well, if you've read any of my other journal entries, you will have seen that I tried the old nylon-washer-under-the-leaves trick to try and "refurbish" my rear leaf spring. Didn't work, at least for me. Sooo.... I finally bit the bullet and ordered a new 5-leaf spring (similar to the original) and KYB gas-charged non-adjustable shocks from BP Northwest. Talk about customer service! These guys should be a model for other businesses! Great experience talking with Greg on the phone. He was very helpful, asking about my use of the car, what I expected, etc. Definitely will do more business with them, as well as TRF and SpitBits. All great vendors.

Anywho, with the new spring on the way and thunderstorms in the forecast for the next couple of days, I figured this would be a good time to pull the rear spring out, which was actually pretty simple and straightforward (I did re-adjust the rear brakes first though, since I hadn't done that yet this year). Just unbolting the existing spring and shocks was all it took; the hardest part was actually extracting the spring from the car, though even that was no big deal (you can check out a video on YouTube from BPNW on how to change the spring - just search for Triumph Spitfire Leaf Spring and it should come up). Just took a little finagling and out it came. Removed the cover from the middle and set aside. Worked on getting the existing bolts and nuts cleaned up, and discovered one nylok that needed replaced because the nylon came out of the nut. The neighborhood hardware store had a new nut, but only in stainless steel and with a slightly smaller hex. No worries, it will work fine!