car slants to the right only in the front

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snowcrow

snowcrow

2 Time dart owner
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Sanpete, Utah
Any ideas on why my car would slant to the right only in the front? im pretty sure its not cause my /6 haha
 
Soft or undersized tire? Bad shock? Camber? Bent control arm?

Best thing to do would be to jack it up and check everything for play. Is it really bad, or just a little?
 
snowcrow said:
all i gotta do is get an alignment and itll tell me what is or solve my problem?
Click to expand...

Get a service manual.
Learn how to adjust front end height with a torsion bar adjustment.
Adjust ride height before getting an alignment.

Or drive your car to my house,and I will adjust it for free. :D
 
Johnny Dart said:
Get a service manual.
Learn how to adjust front end height with a torsion bar adjustment.
Adjust ride height before getting an alignment.

Or drive your car to my house,and I will adjust it for free. :D
Click to expand...

lol well i am going to disneyland for my honeymoon... not sure how my wife would feel about riding in the dart for 9 to 12 hours haha
 
Negative camber increases as you lower the car, so it would make sense that the side that's low has more negative camber. One of the reasons why you have to set the ride height before you get an alignment.

Sounds like your torsion bar adjuster let go. But, I'd want to do a thorough inspection of all the suspension parts on that side, could have broken something.
 
I would first check the height of both rear leaf springs. Then, bounce both front fenders separately to see whether they rebound (a broken torsion bar or rear bar mount in the crossmember would cause bottoming). Take a look at the torsion bar adjustment bolts in the LCAs; they should have about the same adjustment. However, if you start tweaking them, you will need a realignment. Check a shop manual (search this site for online manuals if you don't have one) for the proper procedure for adjusting torsion bars. Make sure that both shock absorbers are the same (I actually saw a Chebby in the old days with a wrong/long shock on the front end). Check these things first as it gets more serious after that.
 
Also check the back of the torsion bar to make sure it hasn't pulled through it's mount.

How does it ride? Is it real bouncy?
 
snowcrow said:
If you read this thread I put where the pic is. And no bottoming plus its a smooth ride.
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i dont know what context you meant that in but i read the thread. im talking about a real pic, like from the front of the car, those pics dont show anything and it looks fine to me. is your camera broke? i can rebuild these front ends blindfolded thats why i ask. get under the car and inspect everything. if something broke you will be able to see it. if there is no evidence that the torsion bar has twisted at the mount or broke in half, do some measuring, dont be scared to get the front wheels off the ground and get after the torsion bars.
 
Badsport said:
Also check the back of the torsion bar to make sure it hasn't pulled through it's mount.
Click to expand...
that's what happened to my Scamp when the crossmember gave up- it slanted a little to the right.
Then a little more.
Then a helluva lot.
I got under to look and concentrated on the right front suspension. I noticed the slack on the t-bar adjuster and thought it was broken. Then I looked back:eek:ops:
 
so with shocks though, should you be able to compress by hand? got some new "used 500 mile" monroe fronts and they seem soft for shocks. how can you tell if its bad besides leaking
 
i don't think anyone really answered your question fully. you're asking why is tilts to one side, and how to fix it...if it is in fact broken.

first off, on some of these cars chrysler added an extra leaf to the rear springs on the driver side to combat driver weight, which can cause a slight tilt to the right as you describe. with aftermarket pro stock springs the car actually tilts the other way to combat large amounts of torque (probably not your case)
this is why some guys order two, right side, pro stock springs as replacements. not everyone is a drag racer!

anyways first see if your tilt is really excessive or not. find a level cement surface to park on. measure with a common reference from the ground up, maybe to the bottom of the bumper. an inch or so? just drive it unless it's really driving you nuts.

several inches? or you REALLY want it level. you need to make sure the K member that holds the torsion bar keyways in the rear is rust free, and isn't letting your torsion bar slowly twist in the housing, thus lowering the car.if all looks ok, then you're not bottomed out, and BANGING off the bump stop, and can get the car to bounce on that side. then it's probably several lifetime alignments where they never reset ride height and geometry says, you kick the bottom of the tire out to alight it...the car sits lower.

Now how to correct it...
there is a bolt, dead center of your lower control arm. use the same measurement method as above to see how much higher you want the one side to go. fire up the impact and give the bolt a spin. i cant remember which way, but a few seconds and another measure will tell you if you're going up or down. level the car with this method, get it aligned because you just threw off the geometry of the front end. enjoy your now level car...that probably rolled off the assembly line with a slant lol
 
johnnymac2k6 said:
fire up the impact and give the bolt a spin.
Click to expand...

:violent1:

First, this is a surefire way to strip the living crap out of the torsion bar adjuster threads, ruining the adjuster.

Second, the adjusters should turn pretty easily as long as the the weight of the car is off the front wheels. A little WD-40 should help this along. There's no reason to use an impact on these. If they're that messed up, you need new ones. And a few complete turns will raise or lower the car significantly, its not like you need to crank on them for hours to raise the car a 1/2". And, just to clarify, you should NEVER make changes to the adjusters while there's weight on the front wheels, so this should be super easy.

Finally, righty tighty, lefty loosey. Tightening the adjusters raises the car, loosening them lowers it.

And the reason why no one said "just tighten up the torsion bar adjusters" is because a car won't go from sitting level to sitting low on one side unless there's a reason, ie, something is broken. Which is why we all suggested that the OP inspect his suspension to find out what was wrong before just arbitrarily adjusting the torsion bars.
 
Lordie

I don' know where to start

DO you have a shop manual?

You MUST determine if something is bent broken or worn before you go around adjusting the torsion bars (Might even be the bolts themselves!!)

And do NOT use an impact, and do NOT adjust these with weight on em. Ya. I know. You've all done it and got away with it.
 
ya know, the more i think about this the more i have to laugh. I went into detail about what could be wrong, and a corrective action if in fact everything checks out, and all that can be said is a one sentence quote out of a 1/2 a page post where heaven forbid we speak the word impact wrench?...last i checked, impact wrenches have several settings, including "weaker than a 1/2 inch drive hand ratchet" if you want to use a hand wrench great. no one suggested touching anything until verifying that nothing was broken. this is on top of the fact that someone really thinks the 3/4 inch threaded plate that holds the adjustment bolt in place let go before the k member keys?...or several lifetime alignments left it hanging low on one side? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but if we want to start quoting posts a sentence at a time we'll be here all day....example

72bluNblu
And the reason why no one said "just tighten up the torsion bar adjusters"

umm...literally almost everyone said that...starting with post #2 on the thread. only AFTER making sure he's not dragging a torsion bar down the road.

good luck to the OP, hopefully you now have a corrective action and plan of attack.
 
the car doesn't bottom out on the side and (luckily) the suspension seems to be working fine. (no excessive bounce)
 
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