Suspension rebuild and disc brake swap...by a noob for noobs
The last step was the alignment. But before I could drive to the shop I had to bleed the brakes. Conveniently, the disc brake bleeder screw is much more accessible than the bleeder on the front drum brakes.
I have a national-brand tire shop nearby whose manager really likes old cars. He's mounted several tires for me and never let me pay, so I thought I owed it to him to let him do the alignment. On the whole that was a pretty disappointing experience. I gave him the specs I wanted: caster +3 degrees, camber -0.25 degrees, toe-in 1/8-1/16" (loosely based on Ehrenberg's "skosh" specs you can find many places on the web) and he agreed to do it. Next thing I know, I'm getting a call from the shop because they want to know how I want them to set the ride height. At least they asked... Anyway, the alignment guy had adjusted my ride height based on measuring from the floor to the fender lip. I went in to show him how to do it right, but he didn't have anything straight to lay across the lift, so I just told him to set the alignment at the ride height as it was. Here's the best he could do with his fancy computerized machine:
The caster (two top measurements) is close to my desired +3.0 degrees. The camber (next two) shows -0.50 as the target because the computer wouldn't let him dial in -0.25 degrees camber. The actual camber is -0.04 and -0.32, not too far off. The bottom two measurements are the toe-in. The machine requires toe-in to be measured as an angle, and he didn't know how to convert, so he just set it to zero. Before he finished, he assured me the steering wheel would be centered, but while driving home I noticed that it wasn't really that close at all.
After this experience I was tempted to do my own alignment as described in this awesome post. However, that would take a long time and I'm not doing any high-performance driving. For me, a better solution would be to shop around more carefully for an alignment shop that does good work on these older cars.
The last step was the alignment. But before I could drive to the shop I had to bleed the brakes. Conveniently, the disc brake bleeder screw is much more accessible than the bleeder on the front drum brakes.
I have a national-brand tire shop nearby whose manager really likes old cars. He's mounted several tires for me and never let me pay, so I thought I owed it to him to let him do the alignment. On the whole that was a pretty disappointing experience. I gave him the specs I wanted: caster +3 degrees, camber -0.25 degrees, toe-in 1/8-1/16" (loosely based on Ehrenberg's "skosh" specs you can find many places on the web) and he agreed to do it. Next thing I know, I'm getting a call from the shop because they want to know how I want them to set the ride height. At least they asked... Anyway, the alignment guy had adjusted my ride height based on measuring from the floor to the fender lip. I went in to show him how to do it right, but he didn't have anything straight to lay across the lift, so I just told him to set the alignment at the ride height as it was. Here's the best he could do with his fancy computerized machine:
The caster (two top measurements) is close to my desired +3.0 degrees. The camber (next two) shows -0.50 as the target because the computer wouldn't let him dial in -0.25 degrees camber. The actual camber is -0.04 and -0.32, not too far off. The bottom two measurements are the toe-in. The machine requires toe-in to be measured as an angle, and he didn't know how to convert, so he just set it to zero. Before he finished, he assured me the steering wheel would be centered, but while driving home I noticed that it wasn't really that close at all.
After this experience I was tempted to do my own alignment as described in this awesome post. However, that would take a long time and I'm not doing any high-performance driving. For me, a better solution would be to shop around more carefully for an alignment shop that does good work on these older cars.