Hmm, actually I'm rather surprised that the heavy end of the light Dodges are coming in compression shackles now. As was mentioned, the natural tendency of tension shackles to effectively increase the rate of the positive arched leaf spring as load increases has resulted in most all trucks in the class running tension shackles for many years. It's kind of a freebie in that you can have effectively lighter rate springs for unloaded use, and dramatically higher effective rating as the load increases. As already stated, depending on shackle length, spring arch, spring length, static shackle angle and so on, it may not drop off dramatically, but why they would go with compression shackle on a "working" class truck (as opposed to something like an S10 or Toy) is beyond me. I don't see any benefit at all since it would be doing good just to keep a linear rate, much less increasing. Hmmm, I wonder if it's simply more reliant on a secondary overload pack or something? Just curious, but did those Dodges have secondary overload packs?
Edit: And for the record guys, lets try to stick to open discussion. Don't poke at someone just to get their back up and don't be overly sensative to disagreement. There have been far too many posts lately that degrade into persional attacks, and the moderators are getting a little tired of it. Not a real problem here yet, but I can see it heading that way, so lets curb it before it goes too far.
That kinda sucks.
