"Bushing bind?" Leaf spring bolts/shackles: how tight?

MRGTX said
When swapping leaf springs out, I gather that it's standard practice to snug up all of the bolts (but not torque them down), put weight on the suspension with the car on the ground, bounce it a few times, then tighten up the bolts on the mounts and the shackles.

This is basically the procedure that I followed when swapping out my stock leaf springs for the heavy duty Hotchkiss lowering springs/1.5 shocks and I assumed everything was good. Yeah, the rear suspension was really stiff but I assumed that's how these new springs were supposed to be.

Last week, I noticed that my car was sitting a tiny bit higher on the driver's side and I decided to try to try again...after loosening up all of the bolts a bit, I noticed that the suspension, while still pretty stiff, was suddenly quite a bit more compliant and I could move the car quite a bit more when pushing down on the bumper...and it got me wondering if maybe this is how the were supposed to be and perhaps I had been in bushing bind all along.

So...what's your procedure? Should the bolts and shackles be torqued tightly?

There is a torque spec for the shackle bolts. I thought it was 35 ft lbs, but that's off the top of my head. My shackle bolt nuts are the crimped style so they don't back off when used with such a low torque.

Also, I always use synthetic disc brake grease from CRC on all my rubber and poly suspension parts including the spring eye, swaybar & shock bushings. It dramatically reduces suspension sticktion and prevents squeaks. It helps make my suspension a lot more compliant on the road too.

Be aware that there are some new types of synthetic disc brake grease out there now, but they don't have Moly, PTFE and graphite in them. They are just the synthetic grease.