Front end rebuild 1972 Duster
The plate gets threaded on until it bottoms out.
Then the gauge gets stuck on...
You have to "level it" using the bubble on the outer edge.
Next, you look at the outer bubbles to see where the camber is.
Holy crap...I'm at 2 degrees of NEGATIVE camber??
My goal is for 1 degree NEGative camber and as much caster as I can get. The offset UCA bushings as installed will get the most caster possible with stock upper control arms but sometimes the camber can be a variable. Here is the caster number that I got:
6 1/2 degrees of caster? That is great! The problem is, the camber is too negative. By taking some negative camber out, it means losing some of the caster. Remember, I set the front alignment cam OUT and the rear cam IN. If both cams are OUT toward the fender, the camber goes positive. If both go IN, the camber goes negative. Getting the numbers you want can be an exercise in compromise where you settle for what you can get. In the end, I was able to get 1 degree negative camber and 6 degrees of positive caster.
On the right side, I had the opposite problem with camber. I could get just shy of 6 degrees of caster but that was at ZERO camber. Trying to get into negative camber resulted in losing caster.
The fix?
Mopar guru Andy Finkbeiner has those "shims" that get placed between the lower ball joint and steering knuckle (As seen above) I just took some washers I bought and used them like so:
This tilts the bottom of the steering knuckle out by a slight amount. The "shims" from Andy were listed to be 2 degrees and look to be about 3/16" thick. The washers I used were 1/8". I used these in my Charger and (along with QA-1 upper control arms) was able to get 8 degrees of caster and 1 degree of negative camber. I won't get that amount of caster with this car but the camber should come into that range.
More to come...
The plate gets threaded on until it bottoms out.
Then the gauge gets stuck on...
You have to "level it" using the bubble on the outer edge.
Next, you look at the outer bubbles to see where the camber is.
Holy crap...I'm at 2 degrees of NEGATIVE camber??
My goal is for 1 degree NEGative camber and as much caster as I can get. The offset UCA bushings as installed will get the most caster possible with stock upper control arms but sometimes the camber can be a variable. Here is the caster number that I got:
6 1/2 degrees of caster? That is great! The problem is, the camber is too negative. By taking some negative camber out, it means losing some of the caster. Remember, I set the front alignment cam OUT and the rear cam IN. If both cams are OUT toward the fender, the camber goes positive. If both go IN, the camber goes negative. Getting the numbers you want can be an exercise in compromise where you settle for what you can get. In the end, I was able to get 1 degree negative camber and 6 degrees of positive caster.
On the right side, I had the opposite problem with camber. I could get just shy of 6 degrees of caster but that was at ZERO camber. Trying to get into negative camber resulted in losing caster.
The fix?
Mopar guru Andy Finkbeiner has those "shims" that get placed between the lower ball joint and steering knuckle (As seen above) I just took some washers I bought and used them like so:
This tilts the bottom of the steering knuckle out by a slight amount. The "shims" from Andy were listed to be 2 degrees and look to be about 3/16" thick. The washers I used were 1/8". I used these in my Charger and (along with QA-1 upper control arms) was able to get 8 degrees of caster and 1 degree of negative camber. I won't get that amount of caster with this car but the camber should come into that range.
More to come...