No front shackles?

[Nhaz]

Howdy. My progress towards repairing all the damage I did to my truck last July is nearing completion.

So pretty much the final problem is a shackle on the rear driver side of my leaf spring has been pretty much bent over on itself. The truck leans about 2 inches lower on that side due to it.

I also noticed while examining the damage that there isn't a shackle on the front of the spring it bolts directly into the bracket on the frame. I am guessing this is stock.

Would there be a minor advantage to installing front shackles?

Better ride maybe? Seems to me that if you have a bit more movement before the frame starts to move from the bump I just hit there would be less of that hit transferred to my butt.

 

[kennykenny]

You can only have a shackle at one end of the spring, and in the rear it is always at the back of the spring. Think about if you had a shackle front and back the whole axle would 'swing' forward and back causing a ton of problems not to mention the truck would wanna walk all over the place. With the front of the spring in a fixed position nothing will move front to back only up and down.

 

[Chance]

Do you mean installing front shackles in addition to the rear shackles? (if so, no the axle moves too much if you do this)

Or swapping the shackles from rear to front?
(if so there is debate about shackle position but I am a believer in moving the axle away from the truck during travel so I would just leave it on the rear of the spring, especially on the rear leaves)

edit* kennykenny beat me to it

 

[Nhaz]

Thanks for the replies peps. I hadn't thought about the axle moving around like that. When I came up with the thought I was only thinking up and down =>