What to look for in an alignment shop?
Excellent info as always. Thanks!
I have been running -1.5° on my Ford for the past 20k miles (on 200 treadwear RE-11s no less) and so far so good...but I'm starting to think that something closer to -1° is probably wise. The fact that you were able to get away with 6.5° caster...I'm much more inclined to try something similar. I do have a smaller diameter steering wheel in addition to the manual 16:1...so I do need to think about that too.
Again, thanks!!
The camber thing is just a guideline, the more cornering you do the more even your wear will be. But for normal-ish street driving I've found the -1° mark is a good guideline. More than that still helps your corner handling, but you just wear out tires faster. If you're not driving thousands and thousands of miles it may not matter, your tires will still age out before they wear out.
At one point I was actually running +8° of caster. That was accidental on my part, I had a set of magnumforce tubular UCA's I bought second hand and I didn't realize someone had installed offset UCA bushings in them as well. I did a rough set on the alignment, meaning I just set it for max caster and then evened up the camber visually (and set the toe). That was before I had all my alignment gear. Anyway, I drove it for longer than I should have before I bought all my alignment stuff and when I finally did do a proper alignment on it I had been running 8° of caster. With my current set up I've changed it a few times, down as little as +6° at one point and then back up. +6.5° seems to be a nice spot, it helps keep the car from tracking ruts too much with the wide front tires but isn't impossible to steer. Above that it really starts to get hard to turn the wheel below 10mph. It's great on the freeway or at speed, but it gets old fast in a parking lot. I have a reproduction Tuff wheel on my car, so I think that's a 14" wheel? So in between most of the Grant wheels and the larger standard wheel.
I accidentally posted my last comment before I was finished. For the adjustable strut rods it's a process, and unless you take it to a race shop they're not gonna want to do it.
I put the car up on jackstands, remove the torsion bar adjusting bolt and the shock. That allows you to cycle the suspension through its full range of travel. Then I shorten the strut rod until the LCA starts to bind when its cycled through the range of travel. At that point I lengthen the strut rod back until there is no binding of the suspension within the range of travel. That's it. But it's labor intensive, you're lifting the suspension through the range of travel every time and feeling for binding. It's very much a "trial and error" kind of process, the more practice you get the faster it is but it takes time. Which is why I would say it's something you'll have to do yourself before you get the alignment done. No one will want to deal with that part. That and the ride height should be done before you go to a shop IMO, unless that shop is used to doing old Mopars and custom suspension.