Leaf spring liner vs spring bumper spacer

[hatleyjm]

I recently removed my spring pack to recondition my leaves. I was looking through some online articles and found an article on leaf spring liners and how they decrease friction between the leaves and help prevent corrosion. My leaf springs are from TBP and are for a 3.5" lift. When I disassembled the pack, I didn't see any liners but they did have the plastic/nylon spring bumper spacers at the ends of most leaves. My questions are:

--Are the liners and bumpers comparable?
--In my case do just the bumpers suffice?
--Has anyone ever had both the liners and bumpers on their springs or is this advised against?

 

[Qumanchew]

I feel like most of the friction is coming from the tip of the leaves since that is what sees the most movement, so I think the plastic pucks are just fine.

 

[Steve83]

Post pics.

Any plastic at the tip of each leaf is a liner, and performs the function of reducing friction. If they wear out, they can be greased...

(click this text)


...or painted with graphite. This shows how to install extruded liners:

(click this text)

 

[hatleyjm]

Steve,

Here are the bumper spacers i'm referring to:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C1CECGS/?tag=classicbroncos-20

On this forum is a good write up about using the liners between leaves:
https://www.dieseltruckresource.com...-topics-93/spring-liners-soother-ride-207334/

 

[Steve83]

Yes, those are tip liners - they're just round with molded pins for leaves with holes near the tips. But they do the same thing as all others. They don't "bump" when the spring is compressed; they're ALWAYS in-contact when the vehicle weight is on the suspension, so they only slide.

 

[hatleyjm]

Thanks for the advice. I’ll just replace the ones I accidentally broke during removal

 

[ntsqd]

If you really want the springs to work slick while you have them apart make some spacers to go between the leaves at the spring perch. They want to be slightly longer than the spring perch itself and about the same thickness as the pad of the tip sliders or perhaps a little more. The idea is to create an air gap between the adjacent leafs.
Like this, but this is a poor example because these springs didn't have tip sliders on all of the leaves:

 

[hatleyjm]

Thanks for the advice. I also like that there’s an air gap to allow moisture to get out and help with drying.