American Made With American Steel Replacement Springs?

No personal experience. However, re-arched springs are reputed to sag quickly compared to new. A search would find some previous discussion.

That said, I wonder what would be required to re-arch with the same outcome as new? Steel does not accumulate stress like copper or aluminum. Fatigue limit - Wikipedia

I'd expect the sag in old springs is some product of the malleable/ductile steel, and it actually deforms to a new shape. Thus it's low-energy state is the sagged profile. If you simply bend it back, it has residual stress that acts to return to its low energy state. I'd guess that you can anneal the steel to relieve these residual stresses, but I don't know if that's any cheaper than new springs.

 

My one experience with re-arching was not good. The spring reverted to their sagged-out state in short order. Not Jeep springs, but American steel springs on a 1970 American vehicle nonetheless.

 

I had a set of FC 150 springs re-arched decades back. It was sitting exactly as before within a year. A complete waste of money.

 

Probably a good suggestion. As I remember there was a drive line shop near Atlanta that would re-arch, re-bush, add military wrap and so on to your existing springs for you. also would build/repair drive shafts, and PTO shafts.
But have not dealt with then in a few years. You probably have a similar shop in your area if you shop around.

 

If you have a spring shop in your area, they can probably get the Dayton copies of those. If you look around, you should find them for sale somewhere. I've been looking at replacements for the front of my J20, and Dayton makes those - with Mexico or Indonesia origin. BJ's sells J20 fronts too, which are supposedly US made and come from Deaver in Santa Ana. If you had the Dayton specs for the 5-leaf springs, I expect Deaver or Alcan could make an excellent copy.

 

The spring shop I used a decade ago has since closed as the land they were on downtown became so valuable, I'm sure the owner retired comfortably. They were in business since the dawn of the automobile. They did good work on my Trail Duster, but I also had them re-arch the springs on my 1969 3/4 ton Power Wagon in 2013. I still have that truck and drive it often and so far, the springs have held. That truck started out at Fort Hood carrying ammo for some of our greatest warriors, then carried Elk out the woods of Colorado for it's 2nd Texas owner. He had mounted a slide in camper in it until the early 90s and the springs had lost their sprung when I fortunately found it in 2013. I thought about re-arching on the Jeep, but it was quite a bit of labor back then, close to $1000.00 in total on the Power Wagon. Then the problem of course is finding another good shop. It is a dying industrial art form. I knew that back in 2013 as I looked around their shop which looked like the kind of place that would be deemed obsolete by those that hate guys like us. I loved it, I could have taken a vacation there. Sad it's all going away.

 

Yes, specialty companys like this are a dying breed. There used to be Spring Specailty in Norfolk, Va. 40+ years ago. They custom built springs for one of our old Mack dumptrucks, and they re-arched a set of Jeep springs for me. I got more than 20 years out of those re-arched springs, selling the Jeep with them. They never sagged.
There are likely a few places left that know what they are doing, but they're getting very hard to find.
-Donny