The other day I had my '67 DeVille on a lift at a local tire shop. It gave me a good chance to inspect underneath without having to crawl under it.
The guy from the tire shop noticed the rear spring on the passenger side looks a little odd. Also the insulator does not look like it is sitting correctly.
Has the spring twisted? And if so, how could this have happened?
I have owned the car for 15 years and never noticed it.
Necessary to tackle, or leave it alone? From the shop manual I understand that it is a pretty big deal to remove the rear springs (in this case the one on the pass. side most likely only needs to be twisted.
I have attached a photo of both sides.
A coil could have broken off of the spring. That happened to my 91 Cadillac. The rest of the spring was still there but a bottom coil broke off.
I too was gonna say it looks broken. Hard to tell from the angle of the picture but it seems like maybe part of the bottom coil maybe broke off and its barely hanging onto the stud on the top of the axle.
I will try to investigate with a mirror.
You can also put your cellphone on video and slip it between the coils to record what is going on, sometimes more helpful and easier than using a mirror.
Using a mirror and some extra light I checked the coils. The spring shows no signs of a broken coil. The bottom coil loops around the bump on the axle housing. I presume that a broken coil is quite easy to see.
It can be hard to tell if they are broken depending on where the break is. Did you compare that bottom area to the other side to make sure it seemed the same? Like maybe there is supposed to be a double layer at the bottom? Also compare to the top? Sometimes the top and the bottom coil sizes are different so maybe they were out for some reason and one got put in upside down?
I don't know that I have ever looked in the manual about replacing rear springs. Most of the time you just need to jack the car up and support it by the frame. At this point the axle is being held up by the shocks. You then jack the axle slightly to take the pressure off the shock so you can unbolt them then slowly drop the jack/axle till the spring can be wiggled or falls out. Used springs usually just fall out. New ones can be a little tougher to get in but some sort of even improvised spring compressor will usually gain you the little bit you need to wedge em in. You usually don't need much.