so i just spent 6 hours in the alignment shop trying to get the car
set up after replacing all the front end parts.
the first point to note is that sitting in the car made no different
(i only weigh 158 pounds and the car is quite stiff - maybe a heavier
person would have affect it). the place i use has a top notch 4 wheel
laser alignment rig which is very sensitive. i saw 0.1 degree change
in camber on one side and everything else remained the same.
i was shooting for 4-5 degrees +ve castor, 0.5 -ve camber and a little
(1/8") toe in. not majorly concerned about the toe because i've got a
midget rack i'm planning on installing at some point but i wanted to
get the castor and camber done for good.
there didn't seem to be much consistency to the numbers. sometimes we
would add a shim and get no change, sometimes the change would go the
other way and sometimes we'd get different numbers if we set the
machine up from scratch again. all the suspension parts are tight
with no play.
on the passenger side i had 1.4 degrees camber with no shims, so as
far as i can tell there is no way to change it beyond that. so i
ended up having to go for a massive 1.5 degrees -ve on both sides.
this makes the car hard to steer and a little twitchy. for the same
reason i had to settle for only 1.8 - 2 degrees of castor because
adding more would add more camber to the passenger side too.
finally, the toe - after centering the rack i found the passenger side
tie rod end would only have about 1 turn of tie rod threads in it -
scarry! so i decided to add another 3 turns and take them out of the
drivers side. this makes my central position about 1/2 a revolution
of the steering wheel off central. also, not having properly
adjustable tie rods means you can't get the toe very accurate anyway.
how do people deal with that? put washers on the steering arms? the
midget rack and dale kit will solve that i suppose.
does all this sound like my crossmember might be a little twisted?
the car tracks fine now and doesn't jump around when it hits bumps but
it doesn't feel good with all that camber.
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