12:05 Garage- ’70 Duster build

racerjoe said

Ha! I thought my method was bottom of the barrel technology, but hey if it works, is it stupid? Before I did the HDK swap, I used the same method but brought it to a shop afterward. He didn't even turn a wrench and said it was dead on my specs. Little did he know that was going to be the last time he saw me there...

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I ran for several years on a home alignment using an angle finder on a 2x4 for camber and a tape measure on the tire tread. Adjusted for max caster, backed the front off to get an acceptable camber then dialed in the toe. Drove great, no tire wear, never even had it checked.

Then I went and put reinforced LCA's on it and offset bushings in a different set of UCA's and it hasn't been the same since. The toe would not measure consistently, I would set it and roll the car back and forward and bounce it and then check it and it would be pretty far off. So I bought some 1x1 aluminum tubing and cut sticks that I set on 2x4's that were on edge to space them off the concrete constantly and added a couple of pieces of wax paper un the tires, but it didn't work any better. Added solid tie rod tubes, no change. Went to a Borgeson box with a new pitman arm and then had a k-frame reinforced and welded and added adjustable strut rods at the same time. The thing still drove like it was possessed and I still couldn't get consistent toe in settings. Gave up and had it aligned. Interesting thing was, I had like +7 degrees of caster on the DS and like +1 degree on the PS. Time we got it aligned and consistent on both sides I was stuck with not much caster but everything else was ok. At least it drives better and doesn't pull to one side anymore. It's kind of squirrely when there are bumps or seams with the wide tires and low caster though. But at least I could drive it finally.

I think my PS UCA is bent and plan to get some new UCA's this spring and try it all again.