K-frame alignment?

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Tell us about your lower control arms.... Since they are the pieces in between the K member and the front of the torsion bars....

Honestly I lean toward the rear torsion bar anchor crossmember being bent but I'm willing to look elsewhere...

If you pull the torsion bar out of the front socket & align it so it's centered in the rear socket it'll be inches away from the proper alignment in the front....

I've pulled lots of K members, never had a problem like this... Considering the issues with the headers & now the torsion bar something else is the problem....
 
I'm thinking out of the box here. Is it possible the car got tweaked, but the K frame was never out. Then taking out K frame relaxed the tweak causing misalignment?
 
1WildRT said:
Tell us about your lower control arms.... Since they are the pieces in between the K member and the front of the torsion bars....
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They came on the car, I pulled all that apart and rebuilt it. They didn't have any apparent damage, and I didn't do any welding on them. I had no problems putting the bushings in them or with aligning the car afterward. When I did that work I didn't run into any difficulty that I can remember.

Right now, the pivot nut is backed off, I have tried with it looser than it is but wondered if it was letting the socket sag so I snugged it up a little. There might be 1-2 threads on the strut rod and the front SR bushing half is removed. There's very little to keep the LCA from moving if it needs to move.
 
OK, I picked the car up under the k-frame. No change in TB situation.

I moved the jackstands toward the TB x-member. No change in TB situation. At that point the stands were behind the cowl and the doors wouldn't open.

Put the stands back where they were. Door opens fine again. TB still won't slide in.
 
tree'd by @ProjectBazza

i woke up this morning and had the same "ain't got no gas in it" epiphany

it's rare, but bars do bend.

but to circle back, with the problems you had on the headers and the previous existence of a motor plate it's got me thinking something is borked in there.
 
junkyardhero said:
the previous existence of a motor plate
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I'm trying to not get too hung up over the motor plate. The car came with a couple of big block 4-speed bellhousings, and who knows what I left behind when I bought it (long story). It just seems more likely that it was just your typical WV hot rodder who didn't know any better way to put a big block in that duster sitting out in the field. It is an unknown though, a wild card.

I will check the bar for straightness, but I've been laying it flat on the garage floor and haven't noticed that it's not laying flat.
 
if you can, get some pics of the LCA and the LCA mount in the K

i think it's been touched on, but a bent LCA pin could throw the whole thing off as well. the same with worn components: sloppy LCA bush, wore *** strut rod bushings could pull the whole thing one way or the other.

you might be fighting a war on several battle fronts too. the classic death by 1000 cuts where a bunch of stuff is just a little out of whack, but stacked together makes everything no bueno.
 
ProjectBazza said:
Could the torsion bar itself be bent?
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It is not.

junkyardhero said:
i think it's been touched on, but a bent LCA pin could throw the whole thing off as well. the same with worn components: sloppy LCA bush, wore *** strut rod bushings could pull the whole thing one way or the other.
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All the suspension, bushings, everything, is new. I didn't notice anything odd about the pin when I rebushed the LCA.

junkyardhero said:
if you can, get some pics of the LCA and the LCA mount in the K
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I can take photos of whatever you want but there's not much to see since it's all bolted together.

This evening, I removed the knuckle from the LCA so it's completely off the car. My thinking was the less weight on the LCA, the less it's being pulled out of position. I backed the LCA pivot bolt way off, and I was able to get the bar all the way in the front socket but it stops short of going in the back. At that point, the pivot shaft is to the rear so there is a gap between the shoulder on the pivot and the k-frame. I thought, maybe I can try holding the bar up into the socket and tighten the LCA pivot, drawing the whole thing in, but when I did the bar wouldn't move forward and pulled back out of the front socket the same amount the LCA moved forward. I've got about 1/4" of the bar outside the rear socket, plus that 1/8" or so it takes for the clip. So close, so far.
 
Grease the ends of the torsion bars and make sure there are no burs in the sockets with your finger.

Back the height adjustment all the way off on the lower control arms.

Also as you probably know there is a left and a right torsion bar.

If memory serves me the odd bar goes on the driver's side and the even bar on the passenger side, with the numbers at the back at the transmission crossmember torsion bar socket.

This is so you get them clocked properly like the way the factory installed them.


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Uncle Bob said:
This evening, I removed the knuckle from the LCA so it's completely off the car. My thinking was the less weight on the LCA, the less it's being pulled out of position. I backed the LCA pivot bolt way off, and I was able to get the bar all the way in the front socket but it stops short of going in the back. At that point, the pivot shaft is to the rear so there is a gap between the shoulder on the pivot and the k-frame. I thought, maybe I can try holding the bar up into the socket and tighten the LCA pivot, drawing the whole thing in, but when I did the bar wouldn't move forward and pulled back out of the front socket the same amount the LCA moved forward. I've got about 1/4" of the bar outside the rear socket, plus that 1/8" or so it takes for the clip. So close, so far.
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alright, now we're kinda getting somewhere.

pull the LCA out entirely and see if the t-bar will slide thru the mount to around the position it's supposed to be. if the bar won't slide, there's something up with the hex either on the bar or on the mount. check, clean, inspect and retest.

then do the same on the front socket of the LCA, fit it up to bar outside of the car. it should slide all the way home. if no dice then there's either a burr on the bar or in the socket, or there's too much grease and the thing is hydro'd up in there. clean inspect retest.

so, now if both are cleanly fitting the bar hex ends, and you're still having install issues then you know something is out of whack.

here's an odd question, the LCA pin didn't get pushed past the back of the bushing and into the socket area when it was installed did it?
 
junkyardhero said:
alright, now we're kinda getting somewhere.

pull the LCA out entirely and see if the t-bar will slide thru the mount to around the position it's supposed to be. if the bar won't slide, there's something up with the hex either on the bar or on the mount. check, clean, inspect and retest.

then do the same on the front socket of the LCA, fit it up to bar outside of the car. it should slide all the way home. if no dice then there's either a burr on the bar or in the socket, or there's too much grease and the thing is hydro'd up in there. clean inspect retest.

so, now if both are cleanly fitting the bar hex ends, and you're still having install issues then you know something is out of whack.

here's an odd question, the LCA pin didn't get pushed past the back of the bushing and into the socket area when it was installed did it?
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I was planning to remove the LCA to see if there's anything obvious wrong with that socket. It's all but falling out at this point anyway.

The front end of the t-bar slides though the rear mount so we've kind of eliminated that already. I think with the LCA out the bar will pass completely through the rear socket. Will try it to be sure.

I can feel the end of the LCA socket and then the end of the pin so I think it's right but will check.

I rebuilt the suspension the year before I removed the k-frame. The torsion bar slid in and out at that point, no problem, and the car drove fine with no weirdness. This seems to have started when I removed and reinstalled the k-frame.

I will be back later with some photos of the LCA and where it mounts to the k-frame.
 
Uncle Bob said:
This shows where the stand is

View attachment 1716257685
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Look at the torsion bar socket misalignment in this picture. The back of the socket is facing UP. To me, that says the frame in FRONT of the jack stand is drooping DOWN. Here's what I would try. Get on the frame rail well in front of that jack stand with your floor jack. You'll need a 2x4 or 4x4 to reach it of course and jack up on the front of that frame rail then check the torsion bar socket alignment and see what it looks like.
 
Uncle Bob said:
with the floor jack in front of the k-frame
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The best I could do with the strut rod in there was to jack up the front edge of the k-frame. The bar wouldn't go in when I did that, and it also wouldn't pull back out until I released the jack so it seems that was the opposite way to go?

Referring to this
20240601_140900-jpg.jpg


I've moved things enough to where the bar leaves the middle of the socket on the L-R axis but it still seems like it's still coming out too high so that seems to me like the k-frame/LCA needs to move downward. I've got some 16ga steel so I could cut out some shims easily enough to see if that helps I guess. Probably can't shim it much if at all because of the shoulder/socket interface on the bolts/frame. But it might be a worthwhile experiment. First I'm going to remove the LCA and see if there's anything up with that.
 
I just have to say, I have NEVER seen a T bar come out at an angle like that. Do you have a shop manual? Somewhere in there is the car/ unibody dimensional points. I would be checking the car for dimensional "bent." And it's already been mentioned, are the bars bent? Other than that, it's the pivot mounts in the K member.
 
Yup. The datum holes in the frame are obvious. The edges of the holes are turned up into the frame, as if to accept a datum rod, because that's exactly what they do. Each of those vertical lines up there in that diagram ^^^^^ represent the datum holes in the frame. Those are your dedicated measuring points. You can "X" them out as well to check squareness.
 
Do you have sub frame connectors in the car? If not, the car maybe twisted causing the problem.
 
The t-bars slid in and out when I rebuilt the front end prior to removing the k-frame.

I might have driven 100 miles since then, no Bo and Luke action involved.

The bars slid right out when I dropped the k-frame. This fun all started when I put it back in.

I have a hard time believing the frame is bent.

I will be back later with some photos of the LCA and where it mounts to the k-frame.

Just thinking here - since raising the RF corner of the car made it worse, I wonder if raising the LF side will make it better?
 
The unibody could have been twisted before you took it apart and now it's reared it's ugly head when you are trying to put it back together. Our 50 to 60 old cars have had plenty of use and some abuse in their lifetime, you never know what the PO put the car through.
 
Uncle Bob said:
Just thinking here - since raising the RF corner of the car made it worse, I wonder if raising the LF side will make it better?
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No that did not work.

The header is in the way of taking the LCA out, here are some photos with it mostly out.

20240604_115100.jpg
20240604_115042.jpg
20240604_115026.jpg
20240604_115009.jpg
20240604_114954.jpg
 
Did you drop the engine, K member and trans all as one with the torsion bars in the car yet?

Car body and torsion mount cross member supported "Up" as you are dropping Engine/Trans and K-member with torsion bars > dropping Down.

Then the torsion bars slid out when you dropped the K-member far enough > bending the rear torsion socket/mounts down in the process.

20240604_134635.jpg



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George Jets said:
Did you drop the engine, K member and trans all as one with the torsion bars in the car yet?

Car body and torsion mount cross member supported "Up" as you are dropping Engine/Trans and K-member with torsion bars > dropping Down.

Then the torsion bars slid out when you dropped the K-member far enough > bending the rear torsion socket/mounts down in the process.

View attachment 1716258373


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No I had the torsion bars out long before I removed the k-frame.
 
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