Rear Coil Springs

Am I crazy, or does this not look right? These are aftermarket springs on an empty bed.



Is it normal the top 5 or 6 coils just sitting on each other?

 

That’s supposed to be a variable rate coil; soft ride unloaded but won’t squat as much when loaded. The design is correct, the implementation may not be. But there appears to be a very small gap between the top few turns which would be correct.

 

There is no gap between coils 1-5. Like, can't get a playing card through them tight.

The reason I even noticed it was like this was I had the windows down today and went over some road imperfections and I can hear the coils smacking each other.

 

Weird. If memory serves, the more turns on a coil, the lower the spring rate. So the section that is bottomed out is the soft side of the variable coil. That would make me think that the application is improper and it needs a heavier coil. I know that Icon and Dobinson - among others - make variable rate coils for the new tundras; most have 2 or 3 turns in that region instead of 5 or 6 making me think they used a coil from somewhere else.

That said, I’ve seen older fords with VRC’s up front where it looked like the coils were near bind. But if yours are in fact hitting bind, they are too soft for the application.

 

These are in fact Dobinson's coils. I called them and they said to send pictures. These are a newish application so maybe not the best fit.

 

Hopefully they get you squared away. They weren’t much help when I was troubleshooting a few things a while back.

 

We shall see. When I talked on the phone they didn't say either way, right or wrong so we shall see how they reply to my email. Thanks for the assistance!