Alignment slightly off after UCA swap. More mods coming-- how/when to fix?

[MRGTX]

As detailed elsewhere in this forum, I swapped in some QA1 upper control arms.
Per the instructions (and common sense) I marked the positions of the camber bolts and attempted to get them back in the same orientation when installing the new arms but they still ended up off a bit, noticeable in that I have to keep the steering wheel turned a bit to track straight. The car drives fine, stops straight and no noticeable wear has showed up yet, though I've only driven it a few miles so far.

In any case, I need to have the front end professionally realigned...but I'm also looking at a set of heavier torsion bars and fresh Bilstein shocks...as far as I know, I won't need to unbolt the UCAs again for those installs (am I wrong about that?) but these mods may be a couple months away. Should I bother with the alignment in the meantime?

Secondly, would any shop be able to set the alignment or should I look for a specialist? What alignment specs have you guys run? Any advice on settings that will clean up the handling?

Thanks for any advice and all patience with my perpetual novice questions!!

 

[Ted Carlson]

I put tubular upper arms on my A body. My were set to give more caster. The adjustment is for both camber and caster. No way would the old settings be correct. No way to install and adjust them without a front end machine. Any shop that has been around a while will be able to set your alignment correctly

 

[MRGTX]

I put tubular upper arms on my A body. My were set to give more caster. The adjustment is for both camber and caster. No way would the old settings be correct. No way to install and adjust them without a front end machine. Any shop that has been around a while will be able to set your alignment correctly

Good point, Ted. These also advertise more caster...so I should have known better, I guess. QA1's instructions glossed over this point, I believe.

How much negative camber have people been able to get out of their front ends?

 

[TrailBeast]

As detailed elsewhere in this forum, I swapped in some QA1 upper control arms.
Per the instructions (and common sense) I marked the positions of the camber bolts and attempted to get them back in the same orientation when installing the new arms but they still ended up off a bit, noticeable in that I have to keep the steering wheel turned a bit to track straight. The car drives fine, stops straight and no noticeable wear has showed up yet, though I've only driven it a few miles so far.

In any case, I need to have the front end professionally realigned...but I'm also looking at a set of heavier torsion bars and fresh Bilstein shocks...as far as I know, I won't need to unbolt the UCAs again for those installs (am I wrong about that?) but these mods may be a couple months away. Should I bother with the alignment in the meantime?

Secondly, would any shop be able to set the alignment or should I look for a specialist? What alignment specs have you guys run? Any advice on settings that will clean up the handling?

Thanks for any advice and all patience with my perpetual novice questions!!

Your choice if you want to risk the tires or not until it's ALL done, because you will need another alignment every time you change a part.
NO parts are exactly the same unless it's the same part number from an OEM dealer, and maybe not even then.
Just an FYI the car can seem to drive fine but the tires can be fighting each other.
Next time you take it out run one tire off the edge into a little gravel or dirt on the road at about 10mph and see how it acts.
Betcha the car jumps sideways a little when the one tire goes off into gravel or dirt.

Use these specs, and don't let them do it any other way.

 

[MRGTX]

That makes sense...
So maybe this is the incentive I needed to get moving on the shocks/torsion bars.

In the meantime, I'll give the dirt/gravel test a try. It will be interesting to see how far out it really is.

 

[yellow rose]

That makes sense...
So maybe this is the incentive I needed to get moving on the shocks/torsion bars.

In the meantime, I'll give the dirt/gravel test a try. It will be interesting to see how far out it really is.

You can change Tbars without removing anything else. As long as you keep the ride height the same, it won't affect alignment.

 

[72bluNblu]

Yup, I agree. The old settings won't work because the geometry of the arms is different. They probably tell you to keep the settings the same just so the alignment is close enough to drive it to a shop.

As for the alignment, the Skosh chart is a good tool. You can run up to about -1* camber before you start seeing adverse tire wear, but on a street car -.5* camber is just fine. Caster you can run more positive than the Skosh suggests, especially if you have power steering. With the QA1 arms you should be able to get quite a bit, I would hope you could get +5* caster on most cars with those. For power steering I'd ask for as much as they could get. For manual you might want to stop around +4* caster, you will notice the difference in steering effort with manual steering. I run more than that but I do a lot of things people don't like.

As for the alignment and waiting, changing the shocks won't change the alignment. The torsion bars themselves won't change it either, but changing the ride height will. And changing the torsion bars of course means you have to loosen the adjusters. And going to a larger diameter bar will change the ride height for a given adjuster setting. However, if you take some careful measurements and put the car back at the same ride height, the alignment will be the same after the torsion bar swap.