Making a '40 rear spring fit a '32 rear crossmember

I'm back!  In case you were following my old blog, I had start a new blog thanks to blogger deciding to close out my old one!  the old blog is @ http://builda32fordroadster.blogspot.com/

My name is Ed Gallagher by the way and I found this '32 Ford chassis or, it found me on Craigslist and I bought it on Feb 10th 2010.  I decided to build the king of all rods, a '32 roadster.

Ok, where was I, oh yeah I'm using a '40 Ford banjo rear axle and since I'm not changing the rear crossmember, I needed to find a way to use that rear end with the stock '32 crossmember and keep the wheelbase correct which is 106 inches on a '32.  You can not use a '32 rear spring with a later banjo rear end because the '32 rear is built for the '32 spring only and the later banjo rears are built for  the later style rear spring only.

So, I found out that if you grind notches in the rear leaves of a '40 rear spring to fit the weird curves of the '32 crossmember, it'll work and keep the wheelbase correct and the square head of the bolt in the center of the spring would come up through the square hole in the crossmember.

Yes, it all worked but it was a boatload of work!  It was a ton of grinding and fitting.  I did eliminate half of the leaves and I rerolled the spring eyes in the main leaf to lower the car.

The leaves also needed a lot of grinding to get rid of the rust in between the leaves.  You could also have those media blasted or chemically stripped, that's what I'd recommend!