I was planning on mating the jitney spring to the axle on Saturday but I couldn't get the ends of the spring close enough to insert the shackles. I figured I could straighten the spring out by putting a chain around the ends of the spring and using a jack to load the spring. That would take some of the arch out of the spring and I should be able to slip the shackles into place.
In order to keep the chain in place on the jack I machined up a piece of pipe to fit over the end of the jack with a notched plate welded to it. I had one of these I made years ago along with a 1/4" chain but I might have left it at the high school. Since that's been years ago now, it's obvious that it's not something I use often but it's a real handy item to have when you do need it. This one's for 5/16" chain. A little more cumbersome but since I don't know what happened to the smaller chain, it'll do.
The operation worked like I had planned but even with gaining the extra length with the jack, the shackles still wouldn't go. When I took the spring off the axle it came off easy enough without going boing! or anything. The perches are in the exact same location as original so I'm not sure what's going on here. I measured the center to center distance of the holes in the spring, added the extra 3 inches for the shackles and it came out 1-3/4" shorter than the distance of the perches on the axle. It would be easy enough to move the perches inwards, I'm just not sure why that should be necessary.
Fed-Ex brought some of my order on Saturday. There should be a couple more boxes show up on Tuesday - I'm assuming there'll be no delivery today. It won't matter if I can't figure out how to get the spring bolted back onto the axle, though.
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