alignment #s

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11.2

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i have a firm feel 2 power steering box and tubbular uppers. i set at -5 camber and +3 castor. i find the steering feels '' touchy '', for example when i pass at hwy speeds i have to be delicate with the wheel cause it is easy to oversteer. it also wont turn the tires back to neutral posistion under 10mph. now having said this the car handles way better than it did with stock parts i'm just tring to get max performance with what i have.
thanks in advance
 
What is your toe-in setting? That setting has a lot more to do with straight line road feel than either caster or camber. Your +3 caster should make the car more resistant to steering inputs than the stock #'s. And i assume you have -.5º (-1/2), not -5º camber right?

As far as not returning to neutral, that's a function of the steering box. I'm guessing that the Stage 2 box doesn't have enough "boost" at >10mph to overcome the friction of your front tires. Also, what size tires do you have up front? Wider tires tend to be twitchier on the street, and can "seek out" grooves and tracks in the road more than narrower tires. Some of that depends on the tread design, some brands/models do it more or less than others, but on the whole wider tires are more likely to do it. That said, I run 275 wide front tires on my Duster and Challenger. They do a little more tracking than smaller tires, but its not hard to deal with.
 
You ARE certain you have POSITIVE caster, IE the top ball joint "pulled back"
 
here's my specs


right left

3.25 2.99 caster
.52 .53 camber
.08 .05 toe

all numbers are in degrees, the only thing that is confuseing is there are no negative or positive signs on the sheet, i do know that the tires are definatley pulled in on top, i can physically see that

i'm running 215's on the front and 275's on rear

i dont want to make it sound like the car is terifying to drive, i just want to know if i can improve handleing. i made a roadtrip with some buddies and cruised a twisty narrow hwy and could barely keep up with my buddies 3/4 ton pulling a quad trailer. he claims he wasnt white nuckled but i think he had to pull his shorts out of his a$$.
 
11.2 said:
here's my specs


right left

3.25 2.99 caster
.52 .53 camber
.08 .05 toe

all numbers are in degrees, the only thing that is confuseing is there are no negative or positive signs on the sheet, i do know that the tires are definatley pulled in on top, i can physically see that

i'm running 215's on the front and 275's on rear

i dont want to make it sound like the car is terifying to drive, i just want to know if i can improve handleing. i made a roadtrip with some buddies and cruised a twisty narrow hwy and could barely keep up with my buddies 3/4 ton pulling a quad trailer. he claims he wasnt white nuckled but i think he had to pull his shorts out of his a$$.
Click to expand...

You'll definitely have to find out whether those numbers are positive or negative, and whether that's toe in or out.

If you've got negative camber, positive caster, and that amount of toe in, your alignment is fine and you may have a problem somewhere else. If you have positive camber, negative caster, and toe out, well, there's your problem. If the tops of the tires appear to be tipped toward the car, that's negative camber. Caster is hard to see, but as Del mentioned the upper ball joint should be tipped back behind the plane of the lower ball joint for positive caster.

Your numbers are good if they're in the right directions. Usually I run -.5* to -1* camber, +3 to +5 for caster, and 1/16" toe in. Power steering cars can get away with the big caster numbers like +5, but if you've got manual steering you probably want to stay closer to +3, as it will make it harder to turn. You can run as much as -1* of camber on the street without excessive tire wear. You can see on the SKOSH chart Del referenced how those numbers work out.

alignment-specifications.gif
 
LOL Allpar won't let you post it from there. Here's one we "hacked"

attachment.php
 
One question I have is that his specs list toe in degrees -- most specs (Allpar, for example) list it in inches. It seems to me that in order to translate one from the other, you need to know the diameter of the tire, and do a calculation (or more simply, draw it to scale and measure the angle). So I can't tell anything about his toe from those numbers. I do understand why modern shops use degrees, but it doesn't easily translate.
 
How much tire pressure up front? How about tread wear? Original wheel offset/scrub radius? I found the same thing when I modified my 68 FormulaS. I run about the same specs as you but with a modified oem PS box. I went back to a 14x6inch 0offset front wheel at 28psi. That helped a lot. Then I stuffed some wrenches in my pocket and went for a road test. I stopped every mile or two and adjusted my toe-in. Eventually I found a setting she liked.(dont remember what it ended up at).Finally I centered my Steering wheel. I also discovered that if the sector shaft endplay was set up too tight, it would produce similar symptoms.I also had to fix the bump-steer created by the large increase in pos caster. I cant see the 1/2* camber on my car. And I cant imagine how you could see caster with the wheel on the car. Hope this helps.
 
AJ/FormS said:
How much tire pressure up front? How about tread wear? Original wheel offset/scrub radius? I found the same thing when I modified my 68 FormulaS. I run about the same specs as you but with a modified oem PS box. I went back to a 14x6inch 0offset front wheel at 28psi. That helped a lot. Then I stuffed some wrenches in my pocket and went for a road test. I stopped every mile or two and adjusted my toe-in. Eventually I found a setting she liked.(dont remember what it ended up at).Finally I centered my Steering wheel. I also discovered that if the sector shaft endplay was set up too tight, it would produce similar symptoms.I also had to fix the bump-steer created by the large increase in pos caster. I cant see the 1/2* camber on my car. And I cant imagine how you could see caster with the wheel on the car. Hope this helps.
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Did you add spacers under your tie rods to adjust the bump steer?
 
I had a similar experience with my 73 when I adopted some settings from AutoXCuda that are very similar to the SKOSH chart, typ street perf. It transformed the car, initial turn-in response increased dramatically. I went to 1/16 on the toe-in and have a similar experience. I conclude that increasing the toe-in, will increase the self-centering action in the steering. Similarly, increasing the self-centering action may result in a resistance to initial turn-in response
 
sorry for the confusion on me being able to see the caster, is what i meant is that the chart doesnt specify positve or negative but i know i have negative caster cause i can see it, and yes i can see it no prob, should i be able to ?
i did not ad spacers for bump steer, is there a trick i need to know about?
 
11.2 said:
sorry for the confusion on me being able to see the caster, is what i meant is that the chart doesnt specify positve or negative but i know i have negative caster cause i can see it, and yes i can see it no prob, should i be able to ?
i did not ad spacers for bump steer, is there a trick i need to know about?
Click to expand...

You know you have negative caster??

No idea what you mean about spacers for bump steer.
 
11.2 said:
sorry for the confusion on me being able to see the caster, is what i meant is that the chart doesnt specify positve or negative but i know i have negative caster cause i can see it, and yes i can see it no prob, should i be able to ?
i did not ad spacers for bump steer, is there a trick i need to know about?
Click to expand...

Bump steer questions was for AJ/FormS.

IMHO, something else is causing you situation. If it's really a situation. Sort of sounds like the car is more responsive to initial "turn-in" than before??

What is the rest of you Suspension System look like:
tire size and rim width
front and rear spring size
sway bar(s)? size?
shock type
does the car have a rake in the rear due to the big tires and/or high arch springs
etc....
 
i had a close look at my tires and the driver side is wearing excessively on the inside of the tire. i'll take car in and start from scratch and i will be certain to get the positive and negatives written down.
should i stay with 3 degrees positve caster if thats what i already have or should i get a little more ?
 
11.2 said:
i had a close look at my tires and the driver side is wearing excessively on the inside of the tire. i'll take car in and start from scratch and i will be certain to get the positive and negatives written down.
should i stay with 3 degrees positve caster if thats what i already have or should i get a little more ?
Click to expand...

If the inside of the driver's tire is wearing excessively you've got something else going on.

Caster isn't a tire wearing adjustment. Camber is, but not at -.5*. I have the camber on my challenger at -.9*, and don't have visible camber wear on the tires after tens of thousands of miles. If you're already seeing tire wear, something is seriously out of wack. And the alignment #'s that were given to you wouldn't suggest that, so something may have moved since you had it aligned.

Are your lower control arm bushings new? How about the tie rod ends? Lower ball joint? I assume the upper control arm bushings and ball joint are new, since you've gone tubular.

As far as the caster goes, +3 is fine. You can run more if you can get it because you have a power steering box, but it isn't necessary. But again, that's NOT causing your tire wear problems, you have something else going on there.
 
I think you mean you can see the camber. If the camber is that obvious perhaps the adjustment has slipped.Caster angle is the angle formed between a vertical line and an imaginary line drawn between the two balljoints, and is viewed from the side; ie beside the car. It cannot be seen with the wheel mounted, or off for that matter,because the lower Bj is buried behind the brake system.
As for self-centering; this is mostly a function of caster ,steering axis inclination (which A-bodies dont have nearly enough of), and scrub radius. It is often muted by new tight balljoints and/or tie rod ends and overtightened steering arms. A too-tight sector shaft adjustment or any tightness in the steering box will also mute it.
I stuck with the factory box because, supposedly, it has a reduced ratio when on-center . When I rebuilt it I put 2 extra reaction discs into it though, to provide less assistance from the pump and better road manners.
Oh I see you have tubular upper arms, which probably wouldnt slip. Also remember not to jack the T-bars around after the alignment as that changes everything. Some things a lot, others only a little. Camber moves the most, then toe, caster very little. I have wonder if your alignment tech could have done a better job
 
Toe-in has to be measured. IMO you cannot 'drive around' and adjust the toe-in settings along the way just until 'it feels right'.

If the insides of the tire(s) are wearing fast in just a couple of days/weeks, you probably still have a lot of toe-out.
Toe-out WILL make the car feel 'touchy'.

Does a front tire squeel easy while sharp cornering at moderate speeds?
 
sorry ajforms, my bad. yes i meant i can see the camber.
bigblockmopar, no tires don't squeal.
thanks for the help guys, i'm gonna get it realigned this winter after new tires and rims
 
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