Help with front end alignment

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Steve Agrella said:
We updated them with precision brand which are much thicker and stronger
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Is the alignment set now to the set of second specs in the pictures above? I'm sure it pulls to the right. The caster needs to be much more equal.
 
RustyRatRod said:
I'm not debating it. Yes it can. Just not as exaggerated, as the tread keeps contact with the road much better. If the toe is out a significant amount, yes it can and will.
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I'll agree on the feathering. I'm splitting hairs I guess. The picture is just old school and looks like a biased tire that just feathered a couple ribs when the toe was off just a little compared to scrubbing the whole tire when toe is off by a large amount while a radial tire will flex the sidewall, when toe is off by a small amount and push the whole tread over and just scrub the edge. Inside when toed out and outside when toed in. Comparatively, camber will wear more of the tire than just the edge. It's a fine line to decipher but the numbers tells the rest of the story.
 
Bodyperson said:
I'll agree on the feathering. I'm splitting hairs I guess. The picture is just old school and looks like a biased tire that just feathered a couple ribs when the toe was off just a little compared to scrubbing the whole tire when toe is off by a large amount while a radial tire will flex the sidewall, when toe is off by a small amount and push the whole tread over and just scrub the edge. Inside when toed out and outside when toed in. Comparatively, camber will wear more of the tire than just the edge. It's a fine line to decipher but the numbers tells the rest of the story.
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No, I don't think you are, really. You're speaking in terms where someone probably has their alignment fairly close.

I'm speaking in terms as an alignment tech for YEARS seeing idiots completely ignore their alignment and come in with tires so feathered from toe that you can just about cut your hand on the rubber edge. So I think we're talking about two different ends of the same subject. lol
 
RustyRatRod said:
No, I don't think you are, really. You're speaking in terms where someone probably has their alignment fairly close.

I'm speaking in terms as an alignment tech for YEARS seeing idiots completely ignore their alignment and come in with tires so feathered from toe that you can just about cut your hand on the rubber edge. So I think we're talking about two different ends of the same subject. lol
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Okay, but I think your dyslexia has kicked in on the direction of pull.:poke:
 
Bodyperson said:
Okay, but I think your dyslexia has kicked in on the direction of pull.:poke:
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Yeah you're right. It'll pull to the left. For some reason, I thought the least caster was on the right side. LOL
 
Steve Agrella said:
Here’s the current specs on the car, one thing I should mention the torsion bar adjusters on the control arms the right dude is bottomed out and the left side is about 1/3 the way in.
The left side the torsion bar is hitting the frame

View attachment 1715840728
Click to expand...

When you say the torsion bar is hitting the frame, do you mean the bar itself or the adjusting lever on the LCA? If the bar is hitting the frame, you have much bigger problems.

Because you have the QA1 tubular LCA's it is possible to "clock" them incorrectly. Based on the differences in your adjusting bolts, it sounds like one of your LCA's may be installed 1 hex flat off from the other side. If that happens sometimes the adjusting lever can hit the frame.

Steve Agrella said:
Also the camber washers were completely rounded out, the guy at the alignment shop seems old school and knows what he’s doing fingers crossed

View attachment 1715840734
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The guy at the alignment shop is a complete moron. First off, your toe specs are wrong even now. Those degrees of toe indicate that you have ~5/16" of toe. That setting should be 1/16" to 1/8". And even if you have other suspension issues, the toe is almost a completely separate adjustment. There's no reason the toe can't be 100% correct, and instead it's way off.

Second, those eccentric washers may be cheap, but it's your tech that rounded them off. The car didn't do that, even if it's completely out of whack. And that means your tech rounded them off and left them on the car.
 
One thing I can see possible on the vehicle fault is if the frame section that cradles those cam eccentrics it messed up.

like rusted out, tabs bent, too much paint, had some wonky repairs in past. That will not allow the cams to rotate freely.

You should have noticed this when you installed all the suspension. So it’s probably not the issue.
 
72bluNblu said:
When you say the torsion bar is hitting the frame, do you mean the bar itself or the adjusting lever on the LCA? If the bar is hitting the frame, you have much bigger problems.

Because you have the QA1 tubular LCA's it is possible to "clock" them incorrectly. Based on the differences in your adjusting bolts, it sounds like one of your LCA's may be installed 1 hex flat off from the other side. If that happens sometimes the adjusting lever can hit the frame.



The guy at the alignment shop is a complete moron. First off, your toe specs are wrong even now. Those degrees of toe indicate that you have ~5/16" of toe. That setting should be 1/16" to 1/8". And even if you have other suspension issues, the toe is almost a completely separate adjustment. There's no reason the toe can't be 100% correct, and instead it's way off.

Second, those eccentric washers may be cheap, but it's your tech that rounded them off. The car didn't do that, even if it's completely out of whack. And that means your tech rounded them off and left them on the car.
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You would think the tire wear would be on the outside with those toe settings.
 
72bluNblu said:
When you say the torsion bar is hitting the frame, do you mean the bar itself or the adjusting lever on the LCA? If the bar is hitting the frame, you have much bigger problems.

Because you have the QA1 tubular LCA's it is possible to "clock" them incorrectly. Based on the differences in your adjusting bolts, it sounds like one of your LCA's may be installed 1 hex flat off from the other side. If that happens sometimes the adjusting lever can hit the frame.



The guy at the alignment shop is a complete moron. First off, your toe specs are wrong even now. Those degrees of toe indicate that you have ~5/16" of toe. That setting should be 1/16" to 1/8". And even if you have other suspension issues, the toe is almost a completely separate adjustment. There's no reason the toe can't be 100% correct, and instead it's way off.

Second, those eccentric washers may be cheap, but it's your tech that rounded them off. The car didn't do that, even if it's completely out of whack. And that means your tech rounded them off and left them on the car.
Click to expand...

Im calculating 0.112” total toe or little less than 1/8”. Using this online calculator:

Convert Toe Degrees to Inches

Inputs:
225/60/15 = 25.6” diameter,
Current total toe = 0.25 degrees positive,
One wheel toe = 0.125 deg.

PLEASE check my work and inputs.

0.112” total toe in is a little less than 1/8

077D6E93-8A75-4C5C-A83F-C06B948AA641.jpeg
 
Steve Agrella said:
I have a 1974 Duster, replaced the k frame with a QA1 and QA1 upper and lower tubular control arms.
I’ve been through two alignments and two sets of tires in 5000 miles, the tires are wearing out on the inside treads, very fast the tires are Cooper Cobras 225-60-15
The car was rechecked too find that the 1st guy that aligned the car rounded out the camber washers so they replaced them, now the car pulls to the left, the camber Is good holding now but they say the Caster is out any advise that I can tell these people to get this car aligned properly would be greatly appreciated
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ok so it has QA1 k-frame, QA1 upper arms,QA1 lower arms.. detail what the rest of the suspension is. what torsion bars are in it? were all the ball joints, tie rods, bushings, pitman and idler arms replaced too?
 
autoxcuda said:
Im calculating 0.112” total toe or little less than 1/8”. Using this online calculator:

Convert Toe Degrees to Inches

Inputs:
225/60/15 = 25.6” diameter,
Current total toe = 0.25 degrees positive,
One wheel toe = 0.125 deg.

PLEASE check my work and inputs.

0.112” total toe in is a little less than 1/8

View attachment 1715840791
Click to expand...
Looks good to me. I just divide degrees by 2 to get a rough estimate of inches.
 
abodyjoe said:
ok so it has QA1 k-frame, QA1 upper arms,QA1 lower arms.. detail what the rest of the suspension is. what torsion bars are in it? were all the ball joints, tie rods, bushings, pitman and idler arms replaced too?
Click to expand...
Everything else is new stock except original torsion bars
 
72bluNblu said:
When you say the torsion bar is hitting the frame, do you mean the bar itself or the adjusting lever on the LCA? If the bar is hitting the frame, you have much bigger problems.

Because you have the QA1 tubular LCA's it is possible to "clock" them incorrectly. Based on the differences in your adjusting bolts, it sounds like one of your LCA's may be installed 1 hex flat off from the other side. If that happens sometimes the adjusting lever can hit the frame.



The guy at the alignment shop is a complete moron. First off, your toe specs are wrong even now. Those degrees of toe indicate that you have ~5/16" of toe. That setting should be 1/16" to 1/8". And even if you have other suspension issues, the toe is almost a completely separate adjustment. There's no reason the toe can't be 100% correct, and instead it's way off.

Second, those eccentric washers may be cheap, but it's your tech that rounded them off. The car didn't do that, even if it's completely out of whack. And that means your tech rounded them off and left them on the car.
Click to expand...
Are you talking that the torsion bar maybe clocked incorrectly in the upper control arm
 
autoxcuda said:
Im calculating 0.112” total toe or little less than 1/8”. Using this online calculator:

Convert Toe Degrees to Inches

Inputs:
225/60/15 = 25.6” diameter,
Current total toe = 0.25 degrees positive,
One wheel toe = 0.125 deg.

PLEASE check my work and inputs.

0.112” total toe in is a little less than 1/8

View attachment 1715840791
Click to expand...

Yeah but he doesn't have .25° of toe. He has .35° on one side, .32° on the other, and a total toe of .67°. So if you put in .335° (this calculator splits it per wheel)
Screen Shot 2021-12-22 at 2.14.53 PM.png


You get .299" of toe, which is a little less than 5/16". This is the toe setting now, not what it was when it wore the inside of the tires. I bring attention to it because that alignment it totally screwed up, and that's the "fixed" version. This shop is in over it's head.

Steve Agrella said:
It drove straight as an arrow it don’t pull until the camber washer moved however by that time the tires were already badly worn on the inside
Click to expand...

The toe setting is the only thing that will wear radials that fast without being ridiculously obvious. Even a camber in the 3° range wouldn't wear tires that fast, and it would look like this...

2712329929_7ca2500a6d_o copy.jpg


Steve Agrella said:
Are you talking that the torsion bar maybe clocked incorrectly in the upper control arm
Click to expand...

Torsion bar hex goes into a socket on the LCA. But otherwise, yes. The tubular LCA's, because of their narrow profile, can hang down further on the pin than a factory LCA. So if you follow the factory instructions on LCA installation and let the LCA hang down, the factory LCA hits the K frame. The QA1 LCA can hang literally straight down. What that does is it makes more than one hex flat available for the LCA position. So you can mis-clock the LCA on the torsion bar. It's almost impossible to do with the stock LCA's, but it's actually pretty easy to do with the QA1's. I've done it. That could explain why the torsion bar adjusters are so different, one of the LCA's is installed a hex flat off from the other one.

But that DOESN'T explain any of your other issues, as you've described them. Do you have a picture of where the torsion bar is hitting the frame?

The loss of alignment could have been from the original eccentric bolts and washers. There were aftermarket eccentrics that weren't threaded far enough down the bolt, so, they tightened up before they actually clamped the UCA in place. They eccentrics could then move, and you'd lose your alignment. It could be what you had, your tech then overtorqued the bolts trying to lock it down and stripped the eccentric washers. Or maybe the tech just completely hammered the eccentrics first and that's why it moved.

Either way they sent you on your way with a completely unacceptable alignment. You could do better yourself just eyeballing it and using a tape measure.
 
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72bluNblu said:
Yeah but he doesn't have .25° of toe. He has .35° on one side, .32° on the other, and a total toe of .67°. So if you put in .335° (this calculator splits it per wheel)
View attachment 1715840898

You get .299" of toe, which is a little less than 5/16". This is the toe setting now, not what it was when it wore the inside of the tires. I bring attention to it because that alignment it totally screwed up, and that's the "fixed" version. This shop is in over it's head.
Click to expand...

I thought the top printout labeled “before” was what the car came in at.

The bottom printout labeled “current” is what it left the shop at. What he currently has I believe?

I used the “current” toe measurements for my calcs.

it’s sorta hard to read that sheet.

F191A445-AE87-47F5-AA4E-00186F87A4B7.jpeg
 
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Cranky said:
Thought I had found one but even he screwed up by setting my toe in to 1"!! At the time I had been learning about front end geometry and what caster and camber did for the car so I started to learn how to do it myself then take the car to have it checked. I dialed in the camber where I wanted it and just guessed on the caster (eyeballed it?? lol), set the toe and did a test drive and it felt good and actually went straight so off to the shop we went. The 'old' guy said things looked good except the toe was off a bit so he set it. The dang thing felt like it wanted to roll over on the way home. I set it back to where it was before going and never looked back. And how does one make a mistake like that on an alignment rack??
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WOW!!!!!!! The 'Ol Boy up at Fred Cox used toe gauge.. maybe that dude used a tape measure and had "Inch-itus"?
 
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