Material for a spring spacer?

So, my Westfalia has a droopy butt. This isn't unknown in Subaru-powered Vanagons.

The cheap DIY solution proposed by the Samba is a spring spacer. It sits between the spring and the chassis. The material of choice is a polyethylene cutting board. Cheap, easy to work with non-specialized tools, etc.

Here's a commercially available version:

But I think I can do better. I can get my local plastic shop to cut them for me in the thickness I need out of whatever material I need. Heck, they can do UHMW for the price of a cutting board at my local ACE hardware.

But the plastic shop is concerned that the UHMW will waller out (that is apparently the technical term) over time under the load. They'd rather do nylon, which is twice the price. I've not heard of this waller problem from Samba owners, but I'm also not sure if anyone's doing long-term inspection of the parts.

The stock spring pad appears to be hard rubber or something similar.

Yes, a big chunk of aluminum and a lathe would be the sexy option.

What do you think, GRMers? Should I stop wasting my time and just go with nylon? UHMW? Cutting board? Trex, which an option I saw on a Land Rover site!?

polyurethane is moldable

Not sure how that's going to help me in my home garage These will have a production run of two.

Subaru folks use HDPE for spacers between the strut mount and chassis to get a little lift.

I use PVC pipe couplings on my coil overs and in the forks on my motorcycles to adjust preload. Stuff is stupid cheap when compared to other plastics.

If cutting board material has a proven history I'd go with that. They must sell them at the dollar store.

There's a difference between "questionable internet idea" and "proven history" I mean, there's a guy out there with a carefully detailed blog entry on using Trex decking material and wood screws. I have no doubt it would work upon initial installation, but I was curious about the suitability of the material for the long term.

The HDPE referenced above would be "cutting board material". I might just go with UHMW as it's a bit tougher. The stock spring pad will spread the load.

Delrin would work very well for that but might be a little pricey.

Holesaw and a hockey puck. Worked fine.

For extra overkill, you can put a hoseclamp or just a ziptie or two around it to prevent it from creeping out, if you do like me and slit it so it sits properly on a pigtailed end.

My buddy's got cutting board under the spring seats on his time-speed-distance Saab 900 that's seen about 40k miles of dirt/gravel/snow, single-digit to triple-digit temps, without issue.

Knurled wrote: Holesaw and a hockey puck. Worked fine. For extra overkill, you can put a hoseclamp or just a ziptie or two around it to prevent it from creeping out, if you do like me and slit it so it sits properly on a pigtailed end.

This. I have a spare pair of helper pucks if the ass end of my ms3 is going to be under load for an extended period due to the coilovers.

I'll need one of those special 6" OD hockey pucks then The Vanagon has a spring guide/bumpstop support in the middle of the spring that locates it quite nicely, so there's no concern about the spacer escaping.

I'll let you all know how the UHMW holds up. I should have 'em by the end of the week. If I need to fine-tune, I have some extra UHMW at home as well as an extra cutting board.

UHMW will be fine. I made some much less robust lower seats for my M3 out of UHMW and they're fine after years of merciless beating. I've also used it for limiters on either side of the rear trailing arm bushings, and as limiters for some inner lower control arm bushings which were rubber tube pressed on an aluminum boss. These SPC early production bushing would creep 'til the LCA was metal/metal against the subframe. All of them. So I turned some limiters out of moly-filled UHMW, mention it on bimmerforums and ended up selling a bunch. Every report has been favorable - no discernible wear after years.

Follow up post! I picked up the UHMW spacers this morning, and popped them into the bus after work. Perfect fit. Compare these to the commercially available ones at the top of the page, then consider that mine cost less than half as much even without shipping.

Just when I thought everything was "lowering" for the correct stance.