Front coil springs?

[Ed Hawkins]

I have been reading everything I can find on coil springs foe my 57 Custom 300 and I missed the boat. I do not want to lower the car in the front and maybe just a little. I could live with 1" but I looked at the springs from the car are at 14 1/2" (listed at 14 . and the aspen are 10 1/2" way to much. The s-10 springs are listed as 13" which seems as close as I will get. Any body use the s-10 springs with v-6 rating? Are they soft or too firm? The car will have a FE 390 3 x 2 aluminum intake ford 3 speed automatic. Just looking for a reasonable driver. 

[Ed Hawkins]

Front s-10 v-6 coil springs are 16 3/4 " ($60 shipped)  Stock 57 Custom 300 are 16.800 and settle at 10" . Just passing along as I continue to learn.

[RICH MUISE]

Why not use Eaton Detroit front springs if your looking for a stock height?
What everybody else uses is really not too relevant to YOUR car. Ford used 9 different springs to keep the ride height the same on all vehicles leaving the factory regardless of options. Most of us have had to fiddle with ride height a bit to get what we wanted.

[lalessi1]

A specific spring compressed height change will result in a different ride height change. This is due to the mechanical advantage of the geometry of the lower a-arm in applying the weight load of the car to compressing the spring. It can be calculated but it is a PITA.

A stock V-8 spring will basically give a stock ride height well within your 1" limit. A 390 with an aluminum intake is very close to a stock Y-block weight (if not lighter). I would definitely use an Eaton a stock replacement spring.

I have Aerostar springs (Moog 850) but I had to space the spring with a 3/4" spacer to allow sufficient bump stop clearance. The springs are 600 lbs/inch compared to the stock rate of 400 lbs/inch (IIRC). I should have used the stock springs with a dropped spindle to lower the car.

[abe_lugo]

I have bought stock springs from this place. Looks like they might still be around.
https://www.springsnthings.com/Pages/coil-spring.htm

[Marc]

Quite a few years ago I bought a set of stock height springs from Eaton. To me the front end seemed way too high with those springs, and they didn't really settle much over time. Ended up removing those and using aerostar springs, which dropped the front end down where I liked it, but I wasn't thrilled with the ride.
Last week I installed another set of Eaton springs, but I went with the ones listed as 1" lower than stock. I have not measured it but the car appears to sit much closer to stock height than it did with their stock height springs.
Here's a pic of it yesterday at a cruise to give you an idea of how it sits now
.

[59meteor]

For my 59, I bought new front coil springs from Eaton Detroit. Since the car originally had a 332 FE and automatic, and I was installing a 428 FE, which should have been about the same the same weight, but since I was going to be using aluminum cylinder heads, intake manifold, and water pump, as well as tube headers, aluminum radiator, replaced the original generator with a lighter 3G alternator etc, which I imagine reduced the front end weight by at least 100 pounds, I chose lighter springs. I chose new springs for a 6 cylinder application, but even still, the front end sat higher than I wanted. Luckily doing a Re & Re of the front coil springs on 57-59 Fords is pretty  easy, and no spring compressor was needed, and it took trimming the springs twice to get it where I wanted. As mentioned, spring rates can vary from one application to another, due to things like the length of the control arms, the distance between LCA pivots and the spring pocket, spring angles, etc.