I have an 83 El Camino that I just replaced the whole front suspension on. It has Southside tubular upper control arms and tall ball joints, Moog 5660? springs (that number is from memory), Blazer spindles and new stamped lower control arms. After installing these parts I set the alignment with a Tenhulzen alignment tool using Southsides recommended specs, mostly. I have -1/2 degree of camber and about 1/16" toe. They want 5 degrees of caster, I can get about 3 with a stack of shims on the front bolt and none on the back one. It drives like it needs more caster, the wheel doesn't want to center its self, especially at low speeds. Aside from trying to jam a few more shims in it, is there anything else I can do?
Steering/Alignment Question
- Thread starter mamllc
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It sounds like you're the wrong direction with caster. All my shims are on the rear bolt. You want to move the ball joint back, not forward. I used a FasTrax to set mine.
I wrote that wrong. I started with equal shims on both to get the camber set then shimmed it to move the ball joint to the back of the car. Started out with almost no caster and got it to about three degrees.
what is stopping you from getting more caster? when you are doing the wheel alignment is the car perfectly level and you have the brake set so the front wheels do not rotate when you are turning them
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3 degrees of caster shouldn’t drive that terrible. That’s not perfect, but not horrible. Steering box good?
Not sure that anything is stopping me, just seems odd to me that with all new parts I should have to shim it so unevenly. Any more and I feel like I'm going to need tapered shims. Car is level and is not moving.
Steering box is tight. Kinda what I was thinking, I sure expected better, it drove better with the old worn out parts in it.
how did you check to make sure the car is level and it's the front wheels that cannot be rolling at all when you are changing the direction of the front wheels. When you are doing caster and camber don't expect one to stay in place if you are making changes to the other and both of those affect the toe
i haven't used these parts but are they marked left and right? is it possible they were put on the wrong sides? factory caster is about 3 degrees. is it possible they come equipped with off-set shafts and are able to rotate them?
Did you mess with the adjustment bolt on the top of the box? Over tightening it can cause the non-centering road walking feeling that you described. Back the adjustment off 1/4 turn and see if it improves.
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