At home alignment

[Robznob11]

What a difference and alignment makes! After the porterbuilt 1" narrow/forward arms, air ride and new front end parts!!!!the truck was hard to steer and wandered horribly! I bought and old school caster camber gauge and went to work! This is what i came up with initially ds 2 3/4 camber ,6 1/2 caster, ps 3 1/4 camber 3 1/2 caster. Toe out about 1/2 " and the ds tie rod was adjusted 3/4 " shorter than pass side!

After pulling it apart 4 times i ended up with 5 1/4 caster , 1.5 camber and 1/8 toe in as a final setup! Would like to have been at 1 degree camber and 6 caster but the bolts on the pass side dont have any more room for shims (at least for me to feel comfortable! ) long story short it turns much better and has near no wandering! I think the gearbox has a little play! That may be the next step!!!!

[Mr Handy]

I did the same thing a couple years ago when I added drop spindles and PS. After spending 200 dollars on an alignment that almost killed a new set of front tires in 500 miles, I bought an alignment tool and did it myself. A couple hours yielded a nice consistent shim stack side to side.
I ended up with -1* camber and 3.5* caster on both sides.
I have 1/4" front and 1/8" rear for shims on passenger. 5/16" front and 3/16" rear for shims on the drivers side. Toe in 1/8".
Before the alignment I would drive down a certain local road and feel like I was being thrown out of my lane either into the ditch or oncoming traffic to the point that it was scary. After the alignment I can drive the same road and take my hands off the wheel.

I would make a change, drive around the block, check the numbers then do it again until I was happy. I think backing in and out of the driveway would have done the trick but where is the fin in that.

[Robznob11]

Well oddley enough my shims are not that close! I could not fit any more on the pass side and still have a full nut engagement so i setteled for what I have! The driver side has quite a bit more room left! With that said the ratio of shims side to side is pretty close! If i didnt have air ride set so low causing the camber to be more aggressive i could probably get away with less thickness!