jimduchek

I spent way too long on this seemingly simple job. Springs cost $7.60 apiece from the restoration store, so I figured, hey, now I don't have to hold the damn thing up! I imagine this is a problem with a lot of the convertible owners. My springs weren't broken -- just weak after 30 years of abuse. So anyway, I got to it. The first one took me NUMEROUS hours, although, to be fair, we were working on my friend's camaro's brakes at the same time (huge thanks to Zwede for loan of an allen-head socket to get his calipers off!). At any rate, the second spring only took twenty minutes or less. Here's the steps. You'll need a pickle fork (you should have one anyway!), a pair of vise-grips, about 20-30 small nuts (the kind that go with bolts, not the kind that go with squirrels!), and probably about three beers.

First, take the deck lid off the hinges, it's four bolts. I managed to take it off, put in on, and realign it by myself really quickly, so it's worth taking it off. Suggest you have a friend or wife help hold to help avoid paint scratches (I don't have to worry about that ;).

Then, jam the pickle fork into the lowest of the coils, and push downwards and 'backwards' (ie, towards the rear wall). This takes a lot of 'elbow grease' but you can get the spring off pretty quick this way.

Now for getting the new spring on. This was the hardest part for me. I have the cuts on my hands to prove that the brute force method of just trying to stretch the spring DOESN'T WORK!!! The spring is too stiff and there's just no way of getting enough leverage due to where the spring is located. I tried for way too long.

So, take 12 ounces of courage and put on your safety goggles, it's time to make a hand grenade (that's what my friend Kyle referred to this as, and you'll understand shortly). Jam the pickle fork into the new spring directly in the middle. When the coils are far enough apart, stick a nut in between them, sideways (so from the side, you see the 'narrow' side of the nut. Stick it in such that the coil goes 'across' two flat sides and one of the pointy-sides sticking directly out. Pull the pickle fork out. The nut should be _quite_ stuck in between those coils. Now, grab the nut with your vise-grips and twist it so that now the coils are held apart by the widest part of the nut possible, with either coil touching a 'flat' side of the nut and a point of the nut sticking out. Now, you can grab nuts in your vise-grips by the 'narrow' sides, slide it into the coils that are held apart (I usually managed to get a nut in sideways as far as bit more than a third of the way around from the fully-inserted nut, although I suppose this would depend on the exact size of nut you're using). Keep doing this, and try to keep the spring straight (it's not too hard). Having inspected the spring attachment mechanism you should know about how long the spring needs to end up. Don't make it any longer than necessary. Be careful with this spring -- it's a loaded hand grenade and if you drop it, cover your ***** (your eyes should already be taken care of!) Carefully slide it into place, hanging off of the top hook and over the bottom hook. Then, with your hand around the back of the support 'feeling' the spring ends into place, slowly push down on the hinge (you really have to have the deck lid off for this) until the spring starts to stretch and you're comfortable that the spring ends are in their proper position. Then push the hinge down ALL the way. At this point, none of the nuts will probably have fallen out, since the coils of the spring which hadn't been 'spaced' are what are stretching. With the hinge down all the way, reach around the back of the spring and push in the nuts -- they'll pop out of the spring -- it's okay to do this with bare hands. Unfortunately when the hinge is 'down' you can't get at the nuts in the front of the spring very easily -- so the safest way for these would be to let the hinge go up and punch them out with a screw driver. Make sure, when you let the hinge up, that enough nuts have been released so the spring doens't fall off of it's hooks! Collect the nuts (I got them all (I think), but one of those magnetic pickup dealies might help)).. Put the decklid back on (hope you made alignment marks!) and enjoy not holding it up anymore. Be careful when you pop it, cause boy does it like to fly up :)

Jim

74-Roadster

Pretty Ingenious!!! :smash:

I'll definitly keep your technique in mind. I'm going to be removing mine in the near future just to clean it up and look at modifying the underside so I can install two solenoids to create a remote switch. Several members have modified their door looks to make them power, why not the deck lid? :D

I'm in Fort Worth and depending on the weather, I may be making a business trip to OKC in the near future in the vette. If you'd be up for an evening out, drop me an e:mail. :cheers:

jimduchek

Need to change that! I moved to Plano, TX in May, I live a building over from Zwede (I need to move outta here... my 'vette looks like such a beater compared to his ;) I'm always up for gettin' together. Keep meaning to make it to one of these D/FW cruises, they always seem to be on weekends when I'm outta town.

Jim