Front Suspension Upgrade Recommendations
I ended up ordering the UCA's from Peter. Do you have any special equipment to do alignments at home? I've heard a lot of things on how people have done it, but it was just unbelievably frustrating when I tried to do it myself.
Well, I'm a pretty simple guy and tend to keep things as simple as possible. My methods may not be approved by some of the pro's on here but it sure worked for me so I'm happy to share! "Your results may vary" but I now have a car that goes dead straight at the track and I can focus on racing and not on trying to keep it off the wall or in my lane! Note that I have much wider wheels/tires in back than in the front so I could not use anything that relied on the rear tires for measuring anything.
I used a Joe's Racing Products Caster Camber Gauge set #28210. This gauge uses a strong magnet to hold itself to the front spindle so you have to remove any center caps you might have in order to use it. To measure caster, you have to rotate the wheels from 20 deg to the right to 20 deg to the left. Well how do you measure that without a means to measure the angle of the wheels? As well as a set of frictionless plates or something to allow the front suspension to move freely?
Here's what I did: I attached a couple of 1x3 boards about 5' long with a piano hinge. This allows them to move independent of the other so they can form a "vee." I then opened the vee up until it was at a 20 deg angle and secured them together in that position. Now lay the vee on the floor with the 1" side of each touching the floor (actually a 1x3 is 3/4" on its side) and forming a 20 deg angle between them. I then use this fixed "vee" tool to put some tape lines in the floor by first putting one of the boards up flat against the outside of the RH front tire. The other board is now sticking out at a 20 deg angle to the right. Put some tape on the floor at the board heading straight ahead and the one pointing out at 20 deg. Now when you turn the wheel, I used a 5' level against the outside of the tire again. When that level is parallel to my "vee" board, I know I'm at 20 deg. Prior to turning the wheel, I basically then flipped the board over and did the same thing for turning it in the opposite direction. But I used the inside of the tire since I was going to turn the wheel the opposite direction. Again, tape on the floor. Then I repeated this for the other wheel as well. The tape on the floor allows you to quickly move the vee board back and forth and have the same exact measuring baselines.
Oh, but what about those frictionless plates to allow the front wheels to turn and not bind up? I used some heavy-duty 55 gallon drum garbage can liners. I used 2 per side folded over about 3 times. I found the steering effort with these under the tires to make the steering not frictionless but certainly very low effort to turn.
So you turn the wheels back and forth, get the measurements off the alignment gauge, make the adjustments on the UCA's, and repeat. Over and over until you get what you are looking for. And since I was trying to address a problem at the track, I did this same process a BUNCH of extra times at varying front end lifts using a floor jack under the k-member. Had to guess how much lift I have going down the track - most people say to use about 1" at the end of the track. But my car would sometimes start it's side-to-side "porpoising" even before the 1/8th mile mark so I used front end lifts from 1" to 3". Just because I could and I was learning how to make all these adjustments.
Reading back through this, it sounds MUCH more complicated than it was to do. You basically need a way to measure each front wheel turning 20 deg in each direction. I used a homemade wooden vee and a 5' level to get parallel lines to determine when I was at 20 deg. And I used HD thick plastic garbage bags to make my "frictionless" turn plates. (I've seen some say they used a pair of cookie sheets with grease between them too!) Again, "your results may vary" but using my rudimentary setup, I dialed in +3 deg of caster and set the camber to 0 deg. My car is a manual steer car and I cannot tell a difference in steering effort although coming from 0 to neg 1 deg caster where I was, I have to believe the effort went up. Just not enough for me to tell. These new UCA's and the settings I did gave me a car that leaves straight and goes straight and allows me to enjoy some racing. Helped me go 4 rounds in each of the 3 times at the track we've had in the last 6 weeks. And driving it on the street, I see no negative effects (speeds are much lower so I never really had issues before there anyway!) And I now know how and can easily make adjustments should I need to in the future.
Hope this helps!
