Lazy Man's Spring Cut!

[fxbill]

OK....Finally did it today...After living with the front end too high for a week or so I couldn't take it anymore and went and bought a good pickle fork..( just in case). When I got home I jacked the car up and started looking at everything and comparing with all the posts and great ideas I'd gotten in the past few days from you guys.....and then the old IBM phrase "work smarter, not harder" popped into my mind. Why go through all the work and trouble of removing the spring when you're only going to take off a little at a time?...in my case I didn't want to cut more than 1/4 - 1/3 of a coil at a time. Sooo...I got out my handy die grinder and put a cutoff wheel on it. The bottom of the spring has not been flattened out..it maintains the original spiral of the spring. If you remove material from the bottom and rotate the spring to where the newly cut end is in the perch at the stop you're done. 10 minutes later I had both springs cut...maybe 3 lineal inches off each one....about 1/3 of a coil. I slid a piece of hose over the newly cut end to cusion the spring and stop any squeeks that it might have. I then sprayed WD40 on the bottom and top of the spring so that it would rotate a little easier, loosened up the top nut on the shock to lower the bottom control arm a bit and went to work. By clamping a pair of vise grips towards the top of the spring and trying to rotate the spring and tapping on the spring with a hammer at the same time to vibrate it the spring rotated around very easily. I dropped the car, bounced the front end a couple of times till I heard it go " sproing!" and took a look..... Not enough yet. Did the operation one more time and this time it looked right. I took the car out and drove it down a bumpy road for a few miles to settle the springs and brought it home. This is what I have now.
Total time for 4 cuts start to finish...less than an hour!