advise for suspension setup for 67 dart

[RustyRatRod]

I never go negative on camber on a street car unless the suspension is designed for it and the owner wants it. People already put off rotating their tires. It's normal wear for tires to wear on the inside edge to begin with. Lack of rotation plus negative camber equals tires worn prematurely. I usually like to see .5 a degree positive camber. The difference will never be felt in handling, but will sure keep the tires wearing more evenly. As for caster, with manual steering you'll want a little less so that it steers easily when parking. Maybe 3* for manual and 4* plus for power. As for toe, I usually go for around .25*. I used to tell my customers to come back in about 1000 miles so I could see the wear pattern and readjust if necessary. You can spout numbers from a book all day long but they don't mean squat compared to what the tire wear is doing.

 

[Robbie2734]

Do yourself a favor first. Get a ride in a car with the suspension you choose. I have a tubular UCL and it passes a lot of suspension noise into the car. The factory used rubber bushings to isolate the noise from the interior. They do work well though but I'm swapping mine out for the stock UCL with offset bushings and see how much difference I see and hear.

 

[RedFish]

Do yourself a favor first. Get a ride in a car with the suspension you choose. I have a tubular UCL and it passes a lot of suspension noise into the car. The factory used rubber bushings to isolate the noise from the interior. They do work well though but I'm swapping mine out for the stock UCL with offset bushings and see how much difference I see and hear.

People fail to consider what differences there might be between rubber bushings and some aftermarket alternatives.
Thanks

 

[72bluNblu]

I never go negative on camber on a street car unless the suspension is designed for it and the owner wants it. People already put off rotating their tires. It's normal wear for tires to wear on the inside edge to begin with. Lack of rotation plus negative camber equals tires worn prematurely. I usually like to see .5 a degree positive camber. The difference will never be felt in handling, but will sure keep the tires wearing more evenly. As for caster, with manual steering you'll want a little less so that it steers easily when parking. Maybe 3* for manual and 4* plus for power. As for toe, I usually go for around .25*. I used to tell my customers to come back in about 1000 miles so I could see the wear pattern and readjust if necessary. You can spout numbers from a book all day long but they don't mean squat compared to what the tire wear is doing.

Negative camber helps to improve corner holding, even a small amount helps. Your outside tires take the majority of the load in a corner, and as the tires load they tip out. Starting negative maximizes the contact patch on the tires with the biggest load. Positive camber was for outdated tire technology.

I've run as much as -1* of camber on the street without adverse wear patterns. I put 25k+ miles on the car I ran with -1*, no issues whatsoever. I haven't logged enough miles on my Challenger with my new tires at -.75* camber to make any useful claims, but I ran the old set at -.6* for close to 30k miles, no rotation (staggered tire sizes) without any excessive edge wear. There's nothing wrong with running a little negative camber on a street car.

A 1/4" of toe in? That's why you're wearing the inside edge. With modern tires, 1/16" to 1/8" is all you need. Any more than that is too much, even 1/16" is enough to keep modern tires from tracking.

I don't understand why anyone would run stock alignment specs. They were designed for the tires on the car at the time they rolled off the assembly line 40+ years ago, and were actually somewhat outdated even for '70's rubber. If you run modern tires, you should run modern alignment specs. A set of offset UCA bushings is really all you need to greatly improve the alignment specs, although a tubular UCA set up will get you more.

 

[USCG CHARGER]

Lots of optiOns out there. I chose the Tshell ( small time racing) full tubular k frame r&p, coil, etc... Mines a 700 hp street car that I put about 150 miles on it per week. No issues thus far. Tshell uses his in his low 9 sec dart. Ok I'm done cheer leading.. Lol

 

[Map63Vette]

I guess my big issue was I had no idea what to tell the alignment shop when I got it done. I can understand that the tire technology and style has a lot to do with how the car reacts and what sort of settings it likes. I can't really blame the shop for using stock specs since that's what they have available when they look it up as far as I know, but next time I go in I figured I might try to get it done a little differently to see if it made it handle a little better. I need to check the sheet they gave me anyway. For all I know they may have updated specs to go with newer tires.

 

[67Dart273]

I guess my big issue was I had no idea what to tell the alignment shop when I got it done. I can understand that the tire technology and style has a lot to do with how the car reacts and what sort of settings it likes. I can't really blame the shop for using stock specs since that's what they have available when they look it up as far as I know, but next time I go in I figured I might try to get it done a little differently to see if it made it handle a little better. I need to check the sheet they gave me anyway. For all I know they may have updated specs to go with newer tires.

The "skosh chart" on this page seems to be accepted as a good guide:

http://www.allpar.com/history/mopar/front-end-alignment.html

 

[72bluNblu]

The "skosh chart" on this page seems to be accepted as a good guide:

http://www.allpar.com/history/mopar/front-end-alignment.html

The skosh chart is pretty much right on, its a great tool to use for setting up your alignment.

I personally think that you can run more caster than it calls for, especially with power steering. It's a non tire wearing adjustment, so there's no reason not to run more. If you've got manual steering you'll probably want to stop around +3, as it will make it harder to steer. But with power steering there's really no issue, you can run about as much as you can get.

The camber settings are right on though, -.25 to -.5 degrees is fine on the street. I currently run -.75* camber on my car, and I've run as much as -1.0* degrees without significant tire wear issues. -1.0* is about the limit for the street though, more than that and you'll start trashing your tires. And really, to run that much on the street you'd want to be driving it around corners more than you drive it in a straight line. I was commuting 75 miles each way into the mountains when I was running -1.0*, and with the amount of backroads I was driving I probably was spending more time cornering that going straight.

As far as what "they" can pull up on "their" computer in most alignment shops, it will be the STOCK alignment specs for 1970, 71, whatever. It takes NOTHING into account, it's nothing other than the published factory specs. This is probably for legal reasons, which is hilarious, because the stock specs are more likely to wear out your tires and give you crappy handling than anything else. But the brilliant minds out there in liability don't get that the factory published those specs for bias-plys, and that a lot has changed since then.