After changing your bars, did you keep the stock front height? Also, do you still have the original UCA & LCA's, or did you change them out? I am debating about changing mine & maybe going with a QA1 K frame. My alignment shop said my front end is a little off & he was thinking the K frame was a little bent by the LCA.
did you keep the stock front height?
do you still have the original UCA & LCA's,
No, and yes.
Still original arms, but with a poly lower and ProblemSolver upper bushings.
I was an alignment tech at the time, and put the sensors on the car. I leveled the car side to side, rear and front, set the front ride height to stock, then set the camber to zero and maxed out and balanced the caster.
Then I fixed the Thrust angle.
Then I mapped the camber change throughout the suspension travel.
Then I fixed the bump steer.
Then I reset the front rideheight to be in the best part of the camber change curve.
Then I lowered the rear rideheight to match.
Then I reset the camber to .5neg and the castor gave up some angle. Then I drove it.
After some miles, I went back and traded some negative camber for some positive caster, and remapped the camber curve, with changes following. I ended up with IDK about two inches of sweetspot to play with.
So I lowered the K to 5.5 inches off the deck, but found that I was dragging my Milodon Roadrace Oilpan a lot.(I mean hitting things with it, not literally dragging it,lol) So I raised it to 5.75; which was better. But it wasn't long before I cracked the pan.
So I raised it to 6 inches and made a skidplate which is now taking the licking.
After that it was back onto the rack for final inspection.
After that, I grabbed some tools, and adjusted the toe on a roadtrip to minimize wander and tugging. Then back onto the rack to center the steering.
I'd tell you how many times the car was on the rack, but it would only freak you out.
Before you condemn your K, straighten out the back of the car. The springs are hardly likely to be the same, and so one side will be higher than the other, driving your Thrust angle. In compensation, you will increase the T-bar adjustment on the opposite side, to force the car into being level, and so the front end alignment goes ugly. You gotta fix the back first.
If you wanna prove this;
Get the back tires off the rack by jacking up the under the center of the diff with a pivot pin set longitudinally between the housing and the jack. Now level the car across the frame, front and rear with as equal a t-bar adjustment as you can imagine. At the back, shift the weight of the car on that pivot pin by rolling the car sideways. Let the axle hang as off-level as it wants to. Now set the front camber to zero, and the caster about as equal as you can make it. Then loosen your rear U-bolts, and straighten out your thrust angle as best as you can.
Take a snapshot of your alignment. Then drop the rear back down, and go see what happened to your alignment.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm You gotta fix this first.
With the 002/003 springs, one side will be higher, which will twist your car, screwing up a perfectly good alignment. You can compensate for it with T-bar preload, and probably get away without noticing it on the street. But that's not my way, and my car always cornered better in one direction, than in the other. So I fixed it. I mean I had unlimited use of the rack and keys to the front door. I about wore out that machine, lol.
By the way, as to a problem at the inner pivot of the LCA, IDK how your guy found it, cuz any change there is hardly likely to be seen at the wheel. As far as the inner pivot is concerned, the alignment doesn't care where it is. The alignment on the machine is a straight ahead snapshot, and only cares where the center of the balljoints are, and the slip-angles of the front tires. Within the confines of the factory K-member, I cannot see the location of the inner pivot to be of any concern; kudos to your guy if he found something.
Remember; the alignment is a straight-ahead snapshot, designed to keep your tires from wearing out prematurely. In the turns we have to hope that the Chrysler engineers got it right, cuz we can't change much about it.
Being a streeter, I have never been sorry that I kept my factory K-member and arms.
