I have borrowed a set of turn plates and a caster/camber gauge and am about to do a wheel alignment. When removing or installing shims between the frame and the upper control arm cross shaft, is it necessary to jack the wheel off the floor or just loosen the nuts and pry the cross shaft? Any other tips or info is welcome, Thanks
With the weight of the car on the tires it will push the upper arm away from frame. I hope all your suspension parts are not worn or else it's a waste of time.
Thanks Bigchief, so I can just loosen the nuts add or subtract shims and re-tighten? New upper and lower arms, ball joints, rod ends, spindles, rotors, bearings, etc. Thus the alignment. After I finished with all that and the brake overhaul I tried the local garage for an alignment. His alignment machine's monitor quit, he got a new board for it and still no monitor. That black cloud over my car will just not go away. As I want to get to the big island Sunday he kindly lent me his Intercomp camber/caster gauge and a set of heavy duty turning angle gauge plates he used when he was racing stock cars. I hope to get it close enough until his big machine is up and running.
No problem at all blue. You should be able to get close enough with the gauges you borrowed. And remember if you need to go more or less on the camber but your at the end of the bolts or against the frame they sell offset shafts.
Well that's what happened, I was trying for -0.5 camber, 1/8 toe, +5 caster on the driver's side and +5.5 caster on the passenger side. That is recommended by Global west. I started with 4.9 caster and --1.1camber on the passenger's, by the time I got all the shims out I had -0.7 camber and +4.5 caster.There are no more shims to remove and I don't know if the offset shafts will fit the global West arms I have. I may have to remove the arm and machine a bit off the cross shaft. 4.5 caster is enough for me but I'd like to get the camber down to -0.5 for tire wear concern. I can get what I want on the drivers and still have less caster than on the right but the shim pack is rather large. By the looks of all the ugly welds, this car may have been in a rather bad wreck and welded together not so accurately. It took me longer to set the toe than do all the rest. Half a turn per side one way then a quarter another, one adjustment too much the next too little. I thought for sure I was turning the exact same on both sides but when I went for a drive the steering wheel was to the right. I don't feel like crawling around on the floor today so it will have to live like that until I get the camber fixed. Thanks again Bigchief.
The black cloud over my car nearly brought disaster but the beer fridge escaped unharmed. The turn tables I used are for heavy duty trucks. In order to have the rear tires the same level as the front I cut a couple of 1-7/8" X 10" planks for the rear tires to sit on and a couple of shorter ones for the fronts to ramp onto the plates. When the front tires hit the plates the rear tires shot the planks against the back wall of the garage, narrowly missing the beer fridge but taking out the sink and the shelf on either side. Thank God the fridge is OK.
One more thing you need to remember is if you are adding or subtracting shims you really need to roll the car back about 4 feet and forward back on the plates to get the car settled. And if your really anal you should have some weight in the drivers seat.
The plates I'm using not only turn but they also have about four inches of movement from center so there is 8 to 10 inches of movement fore and aft, left and right so no need to roll the car. I put a couple of tool boxes in the driver's side, not my 185 pounds but I'm not THAT anal-retentive.
The thing I'm having a hard time with is the toe. I can measure pretty close to make sure the front of the tire is the same width as the back but it would be nice to be able to square the front tires with the backs like a 4 wheels alignment machine does.
I've seen people try with string or long straight edge, my front is one inch different in track than the rear, that wouldn't work. Kind of hard to measure across left to right with the headers in the way. I spun the fronts with a piece of chalk against the tread to get a line equal all the way around the tire , then used a framing square to mark the floor and measured those marks.
Another question, if one is trying for 1/8" toe-in, is that 1/8" each side or 1/8" total in front and rear of tires?
Toe is independent of rear wheels. You can't beat a modern-day alignment machine as far as accuracy is concerned. I would not worry about front to back stagger as long as it's minimal. As long as it goes down the road straight and does not wear tires it's good to go.