How to Inspect Leaf Spring Suspensions for Dodge Pickup Truck

Pickup trucks have a leaf spring in the back as opposed to a regular automobile which is going to have coil springs and probably shocks in the rear. The reason why the pickup trucks are going to have leaf springs is because they’re overall a little bit more heavy duty and you want to carry a little bit more weight in the back of the pickup truck rather than in the trunk of your sedan. So if you hear clunking or creaking noises when you load the bed or drive around, or if your truck has a lean to it, check out this article, we’ll show you how to check out the rear leaf suspension on your truck to find weak springs,or loose or broken shackles, so that you know what to fix or repair. For more cases about Dodge pickup truck, please refer to RAM 1500 Pickup Repair.

 

One of the first things we need to do is always to take a quick measurement to check out how much something sagging. We got a rough estimate 33inches on the passenger side.

Then we measure at the same area on the other side, that is just over 34inches which is essentially means an inch lower on the passenger side.

However your condition might be a little bit different, might be more or less, but that’s what we are dealing with. So let’s get under the vehicle.

We are pay attention to this area right here

This is considered your leaf springs and it’s going to run from in front of your differential right about here

Across and out to the back where you have some shackles and these are meant to pivot

If your leaf spring goes bad, you’re going to find a break right along U-bolt that’s what holds the leaf sping to our rear differential tubing.

If you find a crack right along U-bolt,it’s probably going to run straight on through and more than likely this piece right here is going to actually come free and it can pivot around.

Theoretically even after a long period of time it might even work its way out of there potentially fall out and hit the ground.Or even start falling out and pivot until hits up against the tire which would be very bad.

We also have to check the driver’s side. We need to make sure both of them are in good condition. Typically if you happen to notice that your truck is sagging on one side or the other, it’s more than likely due to either the leaf spring on one side especially the sagging side or even the shock on that particular side as well. Having leaf springs in the rear you’re obviously going to have shocks in the front as well.

Those shocks if one of those is bad, if the left front is sagging down a little bit it’s going to lift up a little bit more on the right rear and vice versa.

So if it seems like one side in the rear sitting low but you don’t see any issues here, go ahead to the front and double check those front shocks, you want to make sure that the coil springs if you have coil springs on the front are good.

We need to look on cracks along both sides especially along U-bolts, and do a quick scan coming along here

And make sure that you see these nice plastic pitons in between there those are vibration dampeners if they’re missing.

Look here which is called the shackle.

This is super important because as your suspension is going up and down and flexing, this needs to be able to pivot in and out and that’s going to help you have control of your vehicle.If these bushing are dry rotted and cracked like these ones they’re very bad. That’s definitely going to be an issue where this is probably going to be either too stiff or even too loose.In which case you won’t have very good stability on the road. You might also find that the metal itself is rotted this one’s just flaking.

In above picture, there is actually a very big potential that they could rot out. It’s very common and that’s something that you’re going to want to pay attention to.