2WD C10 Modern/Performance Alignments

[Hart_Rod]

Just had my 86 C10 aligned. It's got a flip kit in rear which equated to about 8" of drop and a 3" spindle with 3" dropped springs in the front. Here's the alignment paperwork. Thoughts?

[Advanced Design]

Hart_Rod, are the caster and camber in the positive range? If so, does your truck pull left?

[tinydb84]

I remember reading in the make it handle thread that you should avoid postive camber. Do you still have any shims in the upper control arms?

[BMERDOC]

Sorry Guys. I'm usually quicker with responses. Looks like I dropped the ball. Here we go...

Eightbanger: That tire has a busted belt and should be replaced before it completely fails. The alignment shop should have spotted this before the alignment. It can affect the anlges of your alignment. I feel like they owe you a freeby alignment once you get a good tire on it. JJZepplin was right. It looks like you may be missing some spacers. The top and middle picture shows them behind the shim packs on the right side but its hard to tell if the others have them. You have excessive negative camber (I like to see no more than -1 degree. You don't have enough positive camber. Both the missing spacers and the bad tire can affect this and the readings. Can you confirm all the spacers are intact? BTW, I see an E46 in your driveway. What model is it? They don't call me BMERDOC for no reason.


Hart Rod: This is a great example of how green is not always good. Your camber started out in the negative range, which is good but then they added shims to move it into the positive range. While it is in spec, positive camber is not good. They also show your caster as non-adjustable but we both know it is. The difference in side to side caster is over 1 degree. Because the ride side is higher it would cause your truck to drift or pull to the passenger side. I wouldn't want to see more than .25 degrees difference from side to side. The shop you used has a Hunter machine. In my signature you will find a link called "Easiest Alignment Ever". If you show them this link they can align your truck like I did mine and its the fastest route to get a great alignment for your truck.

[eightbanger]

Originally Posted by BMERDOC

Sorry Guys. I'm usually quicker with responses. Looks like I dropped the ball. Here we go...

Eightbanger: That tire has a busted belt and should be replaced before it completely fails. The alignment shop should have spotted this before the alignment. It can affect the anlges of your alignment. I feel like they owe you a freeby alignment once you get a good tire on it. JJZepplin was right. It looks like you may be missing some spacers. The top and middle picture shows them behind the shim packs on the right side but its hard to tell if the others have them. You have excessive negative camber (I like to see no more than -1 degree. You don't have enough positive camber. Both the missing spacers and the bad tire can affect this and the readings. Can you confirm all the spacers are intact? BTW, I see an E46 in your driveway. What model is it? They don't call me BMERDOC for no reason.

Your a diamond mate, and no appologies nessasary, just glad to have this help from a pro, it's invaluable, at last I have a chance of getting the alignment done right and educated on the way.
The sun was splitting the trees yesterday, but the British weather being what it is it's cold and pissing down today, so no chance to get out and confirm if those spacers are there or not...i'll get back to you on that. Yes my old 1999 323 on the drive, I always say if you want a reliable well built run around as your other car...buy German.

[eightbanger]

Originally Posted by BMERDOC

Can you confirm all the spacers are intact?

Yes it looks like they are definately in there Nick.
Can you tell me whether it's positive or negative caster that I need to get the steering to return by itself? also im confussed about shims.....if I want more positive caster do I add or subtract shims from the front or back and vice versa for negative?

Thanks

[BMERDOC]

Yup, they are there. You'll want Positive caster (upper ball joint is tilted rearward on the axis in relation to the lower joint). You can add shims to the front or remove them from the rear to increase Postive caster. The prefered methos is what we refer to as the "Caster Mod". It will greatly increase positive caster and in something you can do in you fore court. The shims can still be used for fine adjustments. From what I remember you had little to no caster initally and excessive camber on the left side. If you can get camber somewhere between -.5° and _1.3°, caster as high as 6° to 7° and 1/16 toe per side and as equal as possible you are gonna have one nice driving truck. Good Luck and Cheers! Keep the questions coming when needed and keep us in the loop!

[eightbanger]

Originally Posted by BMERDOC

Yup, they are there. You'll want Positive caster (upper ball joint is tilted rearward on the axis in relation to the lower joint). You can add shims to the front or remove them from the rear to increase Postive caster. The prefered methos is what we refer to as the "Caster Mod". It will greatly increase positive caster and in something you can do in you fore court. The shims can still be used for fine adjustments. From what I remember you had little to no caster initally and excessive camber on the left side. If you can get camber somewhere between -.5° and _1.3°, caster as high as 6° to 7° and 1/16 toe per side and as equal as possible you are gonna have one nice driving truck. Good Luck and Cheers! Keep the questions coming when needed and keep us in the loop!

Thank you very much for your help Nick, it is greatly appreciated
Posted via Mobile Device

[eightbanger]

Hi Nick, I have taken a couple of new pics after removing more shims in an effort to get the camber to -.5, you'll notice that on the PS I am unable to get the same reading as the DS, I had to remove all but 1 shim and in an effort to get it near -.5 and to get any pos caster on the PS I now have no shims....this can't be correct, is it?

[BMERDOC]

Yup, thats pretty much correct! If you look in my Sig you'll see a link called Easiest Alignment Ever. Look at that post. My passenger side had no shims whatsoever and my driver's only required a total of three shims.

[eightbanger]

Thank you Nick for all your help, we're very lucky to have you here...

[picklito]

After a little home tweaking, I'm pretty close to "neutral" on all my specs now. Caster is about 2 degrees, and I have equal shim thickness at front and back locations on the upper control arm...

How much shim differential can I run between the front and back locations? Can I add a bunch to the front and remove from the rear to increase caster? I know the answer is "yes," but how much of an angle can I put into that cross shaft?

[BMERDOC]

I wouldn't go stacking shims to get a lot of camber. If you read through the thread you'll notice I am very anti-shim. They should only be used to tweak angles for final dial in. If its camber you want you'll need to look up the Caster Mod. It is a little work but will get you 6 to 7 degrees of Caster. Best low buck way to do it and I'll wager that if you are a patient man you wouldn't even have to take the lower arms out of the truck to get it done.

[picklito]

Originally Posted by BMERDOC

I wouldn't go stacking shims to get a lot of camber...

Thanks! Don't need more camber. Want to angle the upper arm back a bit to add caster, until I do the full lower cross shaft relocation. Just wondering about trying a temporary "improvement" until I do the whole front end. Still have a few weeks before that.

[BMERDOC]

Sorry. I meant caster not camber. I'd just wait until you modify the lower shafts. How are you adjusting toe? Are you using any kind of gauge for caster/camber?

[picklito]

Thought that's what you meant!

Very primitively (we do what we can, right?): Tape measure and Ms. Picklito for toe. Bubble level for camber. Caster is actually an old measurement when I had it on a rack, but I "shouldn't have" changed that much since I haven't yet changed the front/back shim differential?? Truck is working well except for almost ZERO return-to-center and feeling like I'm constantly trying to find "straight" on the freeway. Not darting around, not dangerous, just no sense of center.

Mine looks like I could only move the lowers forward about 1/2" or less without significant grinding, but it will be easier to tell once parts are on the bench. I may "bail" and just go with the 1/4" replacement shafts.

[BMERDOC]

Well I guess my question would be How thick are those shims? You should do ok if you remove the rear shims and just leave the front ones in but you won't get the caster you desire for more straight line stability and return-to-center. If you look at my Easiest Alignment Ever thread I wasn't even able to gain 3.0° caster with no shims and my steering is still lacking. Its the best its ever been but its still dead. I don't think any noticeable improvement will be made until the caster is +5°.

I've heard of people not being able to gain the full 3/4 inch needed to gain the 6 or 7 degrees. The most many could muster is 5/8" but still no one has been able to verify the gains at each increment (that I've seen anyway). I just got a new pair of jackstands from HF to start on the next phase of my project (gotta do it in the driveway, my workplace is a construction nightmare at the moment) and that will include the Caster Mod. I think I'll drill locating holes at 1/2", 5/8" and 3/4" at 90° intervals to test each caster gain so people will have the info. Hopefully my driveway work will go over relatively quickly so I can align it and announce my findings.

[picklito]

That would be a pretty cool experiment, and a lot of people would benefit from your hard and greasy work. It is a little odd that we all have so much different in clearance at the lower rear cross shaft. I'm also keeping my eyes open for someone who posts what they can get with just the aftermarket shaft. Maybe that will be me.

[BMERDOC]

On a quick note because Im out with the girl. Which shafts are you referring to? I bought some a while ago because of a thread and mine turned out to be stock. Lets compare notes.

[picklito]

I'm referring to the lower control arm cross shafts, that many are reporting come with the locating holes already moved 1/4".

[BMERDOC]

I had to look back to find it (post 155). I bought a pair. Raybestos 595-1017. When they got here they were 1017B. I didn't send them back because I got them at such a good price ($20ea I think) The 1017B is the Service grade whereas the 1017 is the Professional grade so I still can't verify they were all drilled like that. If you get a set let me know what you find out.

[picklito]

I'm planning to order the Mevotech MK6147 mentioned elsewhere, since they're supposed to have the 1/4" already done. And I'm 'assuming' that mine are the originals, but I have no way to know that. Do we have a spec for where the "stock" holes are and where the "1/4" holes are?

[BMERDOC]

The crossshafts are located by pins in the front of the crossmember. If you look at the last picture I posted you'll see that the locating hole is 1.25" away from the front. The ones that are an additional 1/4" would have a locating hole measurement of 1.5" from the end. If it was drilled for the 3/4" locating hole it would be 2" from the end.

[picklito]

well that was easy! I'll post the hole location once mine arrive.

[BMERDOC]

A few points to ponder:

I looked up that 6147 number and found that several manufacturers use it. One being Moog in their Problem Solver line. Could it be that any cross shaft with the number 6147 has the index drilled at 1.5"? I think its completely plausible.

Crakajax crunched the numbers and found that for every .25" of movement a gain of 1.4 degrees is gained. So as an example:

My truck currently is 2.7 on the left side. Just replacing the shaft with the 6147 number should net me 4.1 degrees which isn't bad. If I drill the index at 1 7/8" (1/8" equals .7) my caster would be at 6.2 and at the 2" mark my caster would be at 6.9 degrees.