James asked about new springs and KYB shocks for his 59 Dodge.
Eaton Detroit Spring, Inc. http://www.eatonsprings.com/ is the
best route to go, IMHO. They have supplied new coil springs for
two of my 1961 Cadillacs and new leaf springs for my 1968
Chrysler Town & Country. New springs have made the single
greatest improvement to a car of any part replacement I've done.
And using the RIGHT new springs produces the right suspension
characteristics and the right ride height. No doubt you've seen
other cars that obviously have new springs, since they're riding
so high, they have to file flight plans before going anywhere.
KYB shocks have been highly recommended on the Imperial Mailing
List, so I've bought sets for three cars: 1958, 1968 and 1977
Chrysler Town & Country wagons. The 1968 got its shocks (and new
leaf springs) in 2000 and they're great.
The 1977 got KYB shocks in June 2001. The day after installation,
there was a puddle of oil from a defective shock. KYB's return
policy is so good that the supplier I bought them from told me
that ANY KYB dealer could exchange it. It's true. My local KYB
dealer took the defective shock back and merely wanted to see the
invoice (from PST Performance Suspension Technology:
http://www.p-s-t.com/) to confirm the part number and date of
purchase and then simply handed me the replacement shock. No
forms to fill out. Not even any question as to why I hadn't
bought from them instead. They did mention, though, that a lot of
performance parts suppliers experience return rates in the range
of 25%, while KYB and Edelbrock are way down around the 0.1%
rate, in their experience. So the counter boys were surprised to
see a shock with no oil.
The 1958 got its shocks this week. The ride seems a bit stiff,
but it's still got its original (weak) leaf springs and junk
tires, pending repainting the wheels and installation of new
tires, so it's too early to tell.
From Paul Holmgren in Indianapolis (thanks, Paul), I received the
parts numbers for KYB shocks for my 1958 Chrysler New Yorker Town
& Country wagon: KG4507 front and KG5511 rear. IIRC, these will
fit all Chrysler full size 1957 to 1964, BUT the front shock's
lower mounting sleeve, where the bolt goes through horizontally,
must be trimmed down (1/8" off each side) to produce a sleeve
that is 1.25" across. Presumably, for this reason, KYB does not
show the KG4507 as applicable to these cars, but it CAN work with
this slight modification.
Whether any of this applies to 1959 Dodge, I couldn't say, but my
1958 parts book shows the same front shock part number and the
same rear shock part number for all Dodge, Plymouth, DeSoto,
Chrysler and Imperials, so I would *guess* that the foregoing
parts numbers would apply. But if anyone has a firmer grasp of
the details, please correct any errors or omissions I've made.
Dick Woodside
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