softer suspension

[ScottieJ]

Personally I would never Grease/oil or wrap my springs. Number one because crap WILL get in, number two because it will be a pain in the arse to work around and number 3 it's bad for the environment when wading through fords or any water etc. there's enough land rovers leaking oil everywhere as it is, we don't need to make it worse.

If you use hmpw strips there's no need anyway, I would use something around 2mm thick maximum.

[kdalton]

2mm thick.i thought you just use uhmwpe tape between the leaves.which is .005 thick.which is half a mm.

[Anton]

Good point, Scottie - didn't think of that! I never liked the idea of wrapping my springs either, but my thinking was that I want to be able to see the leaf springs so if something cracks, I can replace the spring before it fails altogether!

[Ladaman]

2mm thick.i thought you just use uhmwpe tape between the leaves.which is .005 thick.which is half a mm.

Half a mm in imperial is about 0.020"

[ScottieJ]

2mm thick.i thought you just use uhmwpe tape between the leaves.which is .005 thick.which is half a mm.

It's available thicker than that, you can get 0.067" (1.7mm) I can imagine thin stuff wearing out quite fast.

[Anton]

.005 is not half a mm in metric either.

.5 is 5 decimeters.
.05 is 5 centimeters
.005 is 5 milimeters

Half a mm is 0.0005. If you've seen .005 tape, assuming it's talking in meters, it's 2.5x thicker than Scottie's 2mm recommended maximum. If it's .005 cm, then it's a twentieth of a mm thick. Which is probably too thin to make tape from, and even if it's not, I'd imagine it's probably too thin to last more than a couple of days. It'll just rub off, I think!

[ScottieJ]

0.005" Anton I would presume he's looked at the links in the thread linked on the previous page.

[Anton]

Ah, when he said it was half a mm, that confused me. I assumed that with him talking about 0.5mm vs .005 he was talking metric vs metric.

.005" is in my brain about 0.125mm, which is a lot, lot thinner than half a mm. My brains say that 1" is about 2.5cm, so I assumed he wasn't talking imperial vs metric.

Actually, google says it's 0.127mm. So I wasn't far off!

[djc]

I find it very handy to use a basic 0.1mm = 4 thou (inch). A mm is 40 thou near 'nuff.
I saw tape also (eBay) .305mm if I recall (12 thou-ish). Will have to look for the thicker stuff.

[kdalton]

ive took leaf spring off cleaned painted and im thinking of uhmwpe tape.how long does the tape last for on the springs.thanks