1 broken leaf spring. What to do with the suspension?

[79vette]

Sorry, this became a long post with a lot of questions. Please feel free to jump in with any opinions or experience on any of the questions.


While doing some axle and brake work, I discovered what looked like a small crack in my driver side rear leaf spring. I tapped the spring with a mallet while cycling the suspension with my forklift, and discovered 2 of the 6 leaves have through-thickness cracks.

The local spring shop is quoting $200 to repair this spring, which doesn't seem unreasonable to me. That said, at the point I'm spending money does it make sense to go to something better/newer? I don't want to do links/coils, but am thinking about some higher end leaf springs.

These springs are of unknown make/model off a parts truck I bought to get air lockers. That truck was wheeled really hard by the PO and then I totalled it in a high speed desert rollover. At the point one spring is bad the others may not be far behind, and these are the wrong springs for my application anyway (fronts from a gas truck, I now have a diesel, heavy front bumper and winch).

I've heard good things about ORD springs, but I don't know if I need them. I am on 33s with 4" lift and can already put the front tires into the fenders and the rears into the sides of the tub at full compression, so I don't know if more travel would be useful for me. Do the ORD springs improve ride quality? People claim they give more wheel travel, but how does that help me if the tires are already hitting the body? I guess I could trim fenders in the front, but what do you do about rubbing the tub in the back? Add more wheel spacers (I already have 1" spacers to help minimize rubbing)?