I note Ruairidh’s comments endorsed by Duncan, and I must admit I have heard this argument against oiling road springs before. When I was an apprentice, my first boss, who was a real motor engineer, always insisted that leaf springs were lubricated with a mixture of old engine oil and paraffin. When I first bought my Series 3 Landrover, now almost 30 years ago, the springs had never been lubricated and were already rusty and beginning to swell. They all broke within the first twelve months of ownership and had to be replaced. Since then, I have painted them with oil and have had to replace the two rear springs about five years ago as they were getting tired, and , just recently a front spring, which had cracked a leaf. As it happens Leon dismantled the spring for some steel for one of his projects and I did not see any overt wear, despite the spring having seen more than a couple of decades service. I have seen springs where the ends of the leaves have worn grooves into the leaf above, but I have always put such damage down to lack of lubrication rather than the reverse.
25-06-2023, 09:57 PM (This post was last modified: 25-06-2023, 10:03 PM by Denis Sweeney.)
Denso Tape. A very sticky tape used as a preservative to prevent water ingress. Still available check out the data sheet easily available, just Google Denso tape.
Odd that the Austin lubrication charts - which all appear to suggest that you stop every 50 miles to grease everything possible twice over - never mention anything about the springs. Perhaps they knew that they were best left alone?
If anyone wants an unused roll of Denso tape, I have one here you are welcome to, but I'm not going to touch it ever again so you'll have to come and pick it up!!
Thought you were made of stronger stuff Hugh, though I agree it is a tad sticky.
In the petro-chem heavy engineering we used it a lot to protect unpainted areas such as machined flange faces to prevent corrosion before final installation, it was the industry go to solution throughout my career.
I greased my new rear springs and then wrapped them with Denso and bound them with hemp chord, I do not believe there will be any ingress from water, dirt or grit.
26-06-2023, 02:40 PM (This post was last modified: 26-06-2023, 02:41 PM by Hugh Barnes.)
I recall I bought my roll from a plumbers merchants for the purpose of wrapping springs, though never got round to it. My recollection was that it was often used where pipework went into the ground at the point around the surface level of the ground where it was wrapped in Denso to stop it rusting...
This is probably out of sheer ignorance but as described by others earlier in this post, my original springs were very worn with each lower leaf deeply cut into by the leaf above and so thinking this was again, as noted in this post, due to lack of greasing and/or dirt ingress, I decided to grease and wrap my new springs when fitted to protect them.
The pics on the attached pdf document are pretty much self explanatory.
Friction between the leaves as they flex has a damping effect. I have always assumed that binding springs with cord was done to increase the damping effect.
Daimler springs were a beautiful pieces of engineering. There is a spacer between each leaf at the fixing point to keep the leaves apart. At the end of each leaf thear is a phosphor bronze 'top hat' section spacer. The 'brim' of the hat is the same thicknes as the spacer at the fixing point. The crown of the hat goes through a hole in the leaf above. It means there is no steel to steel contact between the leaves and each leaf acts independently. Thats what you got for paying £1,500 for a chassis with no bodywork in 1934. That would have bought you several houses!
