Adjusting rear control arms?
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That would be refreshing to see. Most shops around here set the toe and let it go. No way in hell are they trying to pull a steering wheel!
Well when you get one with the steering wheel radically off and nothing is visibly bent you will. I worked on an 80's Chevy Silverado and went through this. It turned out that the remanufactured steering box was put together a tooth off. That one had me scratching my head as everything was fine prior to the replacement of the box.
I went to tech school for this when gnvair was just a young pup in the auto service industry and this is exactly how they taught us to do alignments. Box/rack centered, everything else tweaked to match the center.
In real life, you'll be lucky to get it back with the steering wheel straight. These guys are challenged for time. Although sometimes peeking into the bays and watching what goes on tells me a different story. Had a rack replaced under warranty at the dealership in the wife's old Caddy due to rack seal leakage (they caught it during one of those free oil change visit) and they replaced the rack. They gave me back the car with the wheel about 1/2" off off to the right. I gave it back and said they could do better than that, I surely could. Not enough time to do it right the first time, but always time to do it again. Eventually they got it to within about a mm of being straight like it was when I brought it in, after 2 more tries. I gave up.
I am getting pretty close to buying myself a set of caster/camber alignment plates and doing all my alignments myself. Toe and go is all you get from my experience.
I swapped lower control arms and upper ball joints on my daily last month. I put it together and the camber was real off so I got it sorta close. I had the shop down the road align it and all it said was 'adjusted toe' in the notes. Literally my eyeball camber adjustment was good enough for them. For the $80 I paid them, I should have just grabbed my tape measure and did the toe myself.
I swapped lower control arms and upper ball joints on my daily last month. I put it together and the camber was real off so I got it sorta close. I had the shop down the road align it and all it said was 'adjusted toe' in the notes. Literally my eyeball camber adjustment was good enough for them. For the $80 I paid them, I should have just grabbed my tape measure and did the toe myself.
And PS. I aligned the rear in my 2+2 to center the rear and fit the drag radials. Stock lower arms boxed with poly bushings, uppers are dirt car heims on one side and speedway rotojoints in the housing.
The rear sat about 3/8" to the right.
I set the new adjustable arms to the same length as factory, dialed in the pinion angle and then turned each about 1/4 turn at a time to center the rear. You are talking like 1/4" of length difference b/w the arms to get it centered unless its real bad. That slight difference isn't going to cause anything to bind especially since almost all adjustable arms have heims or rotojoints anyways.
The rear sat about 3/8" to the right.
I set the new adjustable arms to the same length as factory, dialed in the pinion angle and then turned each about 1/4 turn at a time to center the rear. You are talking like 1/4" of length difference b/w the arms to get it centered unless its real bad. That slight difference isn't going to cause anything to bind especially since almost all adjustable arms have heims or rotojoints anyways.
I brought my GP to a corvette specialist for a wheel alignment. I told the owner what settings I want and when the spec sheet printed out the caster setting was greyed out, the owner argued with me that my car has no caster adjustments...
Lowers adjust thrust angle if adjusted independently, wheelbase if together same direction.
Uppers adjust left to right under the car if adjusted independently, pinion angle if together in same direction.
Call the shop if you need to hear it instead of read it. It's not that challenging of a process.
Uppers adjust left to right under the car if adjusted independently, pinion angle if together in same direction.
Call the shop if you need to hear it instead of read it. It's not that challenging of a process.
This is the exact issue I was having, the lowers didn’t move the axle left or right, just put angle into it. That’s where I was getting confused, not to mention I was just going by eye via hacked off quad shock mounts.
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