Not true! Antique and collector cars are often jacked up and put on jack stands for storage to let the springs relax.
Those are probably leaf springs not coil type.
Bob
slide locked back
- Thread starter v-king
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Those are probably leaf springs not coil type.
Bob
It does not matter what kind of spring they are, coil, leaf or other they will not sag or loose applied force simply for being loaded and doing nothing over time.
A spring must be worked in order to wear out. It is use that fatigues the steel the spring is made from.
Maybe improperly heat treated springs, but properly made springs will only wear from mechanical use if they're used within their elastic limits.
So if you load up a car with many times its capacity, pushing the springs beyond their elastic limit, they might be damaged? You don't say...
Cocked&Locked
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x2. too much malarky posted about springs. above is the correct statement.
Cocked&Locked
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A spring will only take a "set" if it is forced beyond it's elastic limit, which in a proper design, it won't be when the slide is locked back, or indeed cycling under operation. The only time a spring takes a "set" is if it is bottomed out and peens itself, at which point it will never be the same again. They're made to be compressed not crushed. If it keeps getting shorter, it's either damaged, or was never heat treated properly in the first place. If you want to jack your car up for storage it won't hurt anything, but it's not doing your springs any good one way or another. It is better for the tires to be off the ground..
Cocked&Locked
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well yes, because you overloaded the springs far beyond their designed load, and they probably rusted over the 30 years. On the other hand, if you oiled em up and just had the vehicles normal weight on them, they'd be good as new.
Cocked&Locked
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correct. Springs have a designed travel range, based on their material, heat treat and wind/cross section. The easiest example is the case of die springs in metal stamping dies. Depending on the rating of the spring they can be compressed from 20-50% of their original lenght without affecting their life. Once you go past that, they die, and the further you compress them the faster they die. If you bottom them out, they die very fast indeed.
Wire springs, as we use in firearms can stroke much longer as they don't need to exert near the load, or last near as many cycles. Your recoil spring isn't bottomed out when your slide is back, it's just at about 85% compression, and happy there. As long as you don't heat it over 250 C or so, or let it rust, it will be happy either extended or compressed. It's working back and forth that makes em tired.
Cocked&Locked
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which is caused by poor magazine design, not spring collapse. The AR mag needed to have a full curve in it's design to accomadate 30 rounds reliably. Unfortunatley Uncle Sam standardized on the 20 rounders and didn't discover the issue untill they tried to make 30 rounders for the XM177/Car-15 project. By that time they had to many rifles in inventory to modify all the mag wells, and didn't want to have two seperate lower recievers. The straight/curve design was the best compromise they could come up with. Works pretty well 99.9% of the time. but with 28 rounds it's pretty much 100%
