Stiffer shocks with rear leaf springs

Guys,

A friend of mine is realocating the leaf springs on his brazilian 72 Dart just to use a 10-inch wheels setup, and he asked for your practical knowledge on whether using a stiffer pair of shocks or not...He´s wants to use the Gabriel air shocks, are they worth the try ?
What´s your opinion about it ?

I am against air shocks. If the springs are doing their job then you don't need air shocks. Shocks are really only to "control" the suspension. The springs are for the ride height.
I suggest a high quality pair of traditional style shocks.You are going to find a love em or hate em attitude toward air shocks. Good luck to you and your friend with the project.

P.S. You guys are lucky to have the 360 Darts from the late '70's. Is rust much of a problem for you?

I agree, air shocks are not the way to go. The ride is terrible and the handling is worse. You especially don't want to use them for tire clearence. Any one who's had a shock blow out knows what I mean......if they're still alive!

Thank you very much for your observations, my friends !!!
Owdkasd, we used to have some serious rust problems with the few "survivors", but today we can have access to some very good metal stuff and great professionals (surely not cheap, indeed) that can deal with these problems...
And we´re managing to get a fuel injected stroker version of our bulletproof 318 V8, Brazilian Darts only had this powerplant choice here...It´s possible to import the whole crate, but the our taxes here are just proibitive, so we decided to extract the best of our small-block Mopar V8.