Can I Drive With a Broken Leaf Spring? Technically, you can drive a truck with a broken leaf spring, but that doesn’t mean you should. Driving a truck with a broken middle leaf could render your vehicle unstable, but not too dangerous, provided you limit your driving to the nearest, safest places.

Leaf springs are an integral part of a vehicle’s suspension system. They are relatively easy to replace on your own after you raise the vehicle up with a floor jack. A few bolts fasten the springs to the brackets underneath the car.

Common Signs Your Leaf Springs Need to Be Replaced

1. Difficulty steering or vehicle pulling to one side as you drive.
2. Feeling even small bumps as you drive down the road.
3. Your truck nose dives, leans back or rolls with momentum.

A used leaf spring is generally interchangeable with a new one as long as both are the exact same size. Therefore, when you replace an old leaf spring with a duplicate, it will restore the performance of the truck to its earlier driving condition.

If you remove longer leaves (and leave shorter leaves in place), the spring will be lower & stiffer. If you remove shorter leaves (and leave longer leaves in place), the spring pack will be lower & softer.

Leaf springs are subject to wear and tear over the course of several years, largely because of the various moving parts that comprise the springs. Leaf springs can also start to lag from prolonged periods of uneven weight distributions from within a vehicle.

You can remove all but the main one if you want, but you’ll get less desirable results, including axle wrap, twisting of the leaf springs and excessive drop. Typically, you want to remove the overload leaf or the middle leaf in the pack.

Support the truck by the frame and stick a jack under the axle. Cut the axle U-bolts off with a bolt cutter or cutting wheel and lower the axle down. Take out the center pin in the pack and pull out the leaf you want to remove.

You will probably have to use vice grips on the bottom under the leaf pack where the head of the bolt is. Once you remove the nut off of the top, you can push up on the leaf pack, and remove the bolt and the overload leaf from between the leafs and the axle. To put it all back together, simply reverse the process.

To lower it, simply remove the shackles or extension plates/bars and attach the ends of the leaf springs to the mounting points on the car body. Here’s how: Raise the rear-end and support the vehicle on the frame. Loosen and remove the bolts securing the shackle plates to the leaf spring ends and body mounts.

Because lowering means getting stiffer springs, there is less weight transfer when you hit the gas or brake hard. This means you’ll enjoy faster acceleration and quicker stops. Lowered vehicles are more aerodynamic. Some owners of low-stance vehicles also notice improved gas mileage.

The Normal and Accepted Way to drop the front end is to install a NEW dropped axle made for your car. Keep in mind that your original axle is probably about a 1″ to 2″ factory drop, and when installing a new 4″ drop axle, this would then only lower your car anywhere from 3″ to 2″.

so the taller the block, and the weaker the leaf pack, the more pronounced this ‘wrap’ will be, leading to the slightly worse ride quality than without blocks, due to the fore and afte swaying of the blocks.

Commonly known as “Universal Lowering Blocks”, these babies will fit any truck with 2 ½” wide leaf springs. They are placed between your axle and the leaf spring and it lowers your truck by spacing your axle up towards the bottom of your truck.