need alignment help!

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spooled scamp

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stupid question. started building my 71 scamp over ten years ago. then kids, need i say more? car has those chromoly tubular upper control arms, forget the brand. i had just bolted them in and the alignement is way off on the front end for camber/caster.

can someone take a quick pic for me and post of their upper control arm cam bolts? just need to get it close enough to be way better than it is now. sorta in a pickle and need to register and drive the car (thats a good problem i guess) cause i need to work on my truck. no worries on toe, just one side of the car is really outa wack and dont have money or time to get it aligned. thanks for any help.
 
Your not going to get anywhere by using another car's reference points. There's only one way to ensure your car is aligned properly and that's to take it to a REPUTABLE guy who know's what he's doing. Not the answer you were looking for but the truth...btw, welcome!
 
Your not going to get anywhere by using another car's reference points. There's only one way to ensure your car is aligned properly and that's to take it to a REPUTABLE guy who know's what he's doing. Not the answer you were looking for but the truth...btw, welcome!

Not true. You can get these cars a lot closer to "right" than you'd think just by doing the following...

First thing you want to do is make sure the car is level. Adjusting the height with the torsion bar adjusters changes the alignment, so set the ride height where you want it first. If the car isn't level side to side the alignment will be different side to side.

Next, adjust the camber bolts on the UCA's. On the front UCA mount the camber bolt should be all the way "out", ie, rotated away from the frame. On the rear UCA mount the camber bolt should be all the way "in", so the bolt is as close to the frame as possible. That should set the camber and caster pretty evenly side to side, and it should actually be fairly close to where you want to be. If the tires appear too "tipped in" at the top, you can rotate the rear camber bolt out away from the frame a little. This will reduce the negative camber (tire appearing tipped in at the top, toward the car), but it will also reduce the +caster. If your car sits lower than the stock ride height that may be necessary, as you gain negative camber as the car is lowered. Ideally, if you have radial tires you want a small amount of negative camber. -.5* is a good place to be for a street car, but anything less than -1* won't cause any abnormal wear. I run -.9* on my Challenger with no issues. If you're "eyeballing" it, -1* of camber is about the point where it becomes fairly easy to see that the tires have negative camber, even just at a glance. Even at -.5* the tires will appear pretty much vertical at first glance, you'll only see the negative camber if you really look for it.

Toe- you MUST set this. Caster isn't a tire wearing adjustment, and camber only is if it's WAY off, like, well over 1* in either direction. Toe, on the other hand, will strip all the tread off your tires in short order if it's wrong. Once everything else is adjusted, you can park the car on level ground with the wheels straight ahead and measure center to center on the tires in the front where the tires touch the ground, and again in the back. You want the tires toed in about 1/8" to 1/16" ideally (front c-c measurement 1/16" to 1/8" narrower than the rear), but if you can get it under a 1/4" and you should be ok to drive it to an alignment shop.

Obviously, every car is a little different, so some fine tuning on an alignment rack is going to be needed before you put a ton of miles on the car. But if your suspension bushings and components are straight and in good condition, and your car hasn't been hit or bent, those settings should get you pretty close. If you set the car up like that and it STILL looks different side to side, you may have damaged suspension parts that will need to be dealt with.

I've done a few cars exactly like I've described above and had them very close when they went to the alignment shop. My Duster has 6k miles on the alignment that I put on it. No abnormal tire wear, drives straight, doesn't pull. But I've done this more than a few times so I've gotten pretty decent at roughing alignments in. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a good ruler and your eyeballs if you know what you're looking for.
 
thanks guys! totally agree only proper way is an alignment shop! but thats the answer i was looking for is just a general direction to turn the cam bolts which i have way off. i had just slapped it together and that was ten plus years ago. much appreciated!
 
"Obviously, every car is a little different, so some fine tuning on an alignment rack is going to be needed"

Exactly my point....good explanation though:thumbrig:
 
You can certainly get it close enough I the shop to drive to an alignment shop.

Just set your toe to about 1/8". Camber is easy put a level on the side of the wheel or tire and you want it level or a tad in at the top. Castor on a garage floor. Can't help you there.

For specs you want positive castor (manual steering 1-3 degrees seems to work well), negative camber (.25 to .75) and a 1/16" to 1/8" toe.

Have them put .5" more negative camber in the passenger wheel. this will help account for the crown on the road.
 
"Close enough?" HELL YOU CAN ALIGN IT YOURSELF. There are plenty of stories on here about poor alignment shops who cannot comprehend or "won't" align these cars properly.

There is about 10 tons of "stuff" on the internet about DIY alignment. I did it and I'm old. It hurts. It's painful. But I did it.

WHAT YOU NEED

1...A flat place to work. I did mine by !!! leveling up !!! my car trailer !!! and using that for a work platform, "alignment rack."

2...You need a CAMBER gauge. This is nothing more than an accurate level from which you can figure degrees of tilt. You can buy these all over the place. You can make your own or buy them reasonably. I found an old Ammco caster camber gauge on CL with some other stuff

My old Ammco gauge

attachment.php


You are ACTUALLY measuring CAMBER. CASTER is derived by measuring the difference in camber change when turning the wheels out and then in. Very very very simple.

You turn the wheels out 20 degrees by means of a simple protractor. You measure the camber. You turn them IN 20 degrees and again measure camber. Take the difference between the two, and multiply by 1.5 This is your CASTER figure.

For radials you want the tires IN at the top, as opposed to the OLD figures for bias tires which had the tops of the tires OUT at the tops. What you want is "negative" camber with radials

3....You need some method of turning the wheels and if you search this, (DIY alignment, etc) there are lots of ways, including pieces of greased sheet metal, using salt between tiles, I don't know what all

4...Toe: You need a method of marking the tires to obtain the rotating plane. A simple scribe made from a nail and scrap lumber works, you can mark the tire itself or pieces of masking tape. Then just use a tape front and rear of the tires, if you have two guys. I don't I "remade" a toe gauge I bought the pieces of

Nothing but a fancy tape measure:

attachment.php


Read this:

http://www.allpar.com/history/mopar/front-end-alignment.html

"What we" go by around here is the "skosh chart" at the bottom of the page

289d4j7.jpg


Some other links

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=195810

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=248235

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=204118

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=227050

There is TONS of caster / camber gauges available reasonably, and you can make them

https://www.google.com/search?newwi...sedr...0...1c.1.64.img..0.24.1379.DJVuA6nNi2c
 
Agreed some alignment shops shouldn't even bear the title.

After trying several places I actually go to the local chevy dealership for mine and they do a stand up job with white glove care. It's also cheap because it's a flat fee job.
 
Agreed some alignment shops shouldn't even bear the title.

After trying several places I actually go to the local chevy dealership for mine and they do a stand up job with white glove care. It's also cheap because it's a flat fee job.

Years ago the best alignments I got were at our small town local dealers. There were two "old guys." You don't need lasers to do accurate alignments, LOL
 
"Close enough?" HELL YOU CAN ALIGN IT YOURSELF. There are plenty of stories on here about poor alignment shops who cannot comprehend or "won't" align these cars properly.

There is about 10 tons of "stuff" on the internet about DIY alignment. I did it and I'm old. It hurts. It's painful. But I did it.

Del you're my hero. :D :thumbup:

While I have most of the tools you listed, and have done my own alignments, you did a GREAT job of explaining everything in your post.

The number of alignment shops out there that actually know how to align these cars is dwindling by the day. I had a guy that worked at a major chain that actually knew what he was doing, but he moved on. Most places I have to explain to the techs how to make adjustments. Which always baffles me, these cars are SUPER easy to adjust with the camber bolts, easier than a lot of cars out there that use shims etc. Now, if you have adjustable UCA's things are a little more entertaining when you're adjusting the lengths of the UCA legs, but once that's done it's right back to the camber bolts.

I basically do my alignments myself now. I just take them to the local shop to have them checked on the rack. Camber and toe are pretty easy since they're done static with nothing moving and are measured directly. Caster can be a little more difficult to measure correctly since you have to move the wheels accurately to get the calculations right. Which is why I still usually get mine checked on the rack, but the last couple of times I've done this the changes that were needed were minimal at best. Basically, the trip to the rack was overkill, I could have driven it forever without tire wear or handling issues.

Once you've done a few it gets pretty easy, and once you know the "baseline" for your car you can make adjustments on your own.
 
Sorry for this dumb question, but I can't seem to find a description beyond "out" and "in" in the forum. The question of, "what do the cams look like before?" - unfortunately I swapped in tubular arms, and didn't take a pic before doing that.

"On the front UCA mount the camber bolt should be all the way "out", ie, rotated away from the frame." What does this look like? Are you saying that the big lobe is on the inside and the bolt hole is out? Is "out" clockwise and "in" counterclockwise?
 
What they mean is the BOLT is pushing "out" or "in" relative. So with the bolt say, "all the way out" away from the frame, the "big" part of the cam would be on the frame side of the bolt and the thin side would be outboard

I've never effed with tube arms, are they adjustable? This should make a big difference. Otherwise, "follow instructions" of whoever made those arms.
 
Thank you. It's starting to make sense to me.

The p-s-t arms aren't adjustable, and there are no instructions - they're just marketed as being built with more caster in them than stock. (http://www.p-s-t.com/Tubular-Front-Control-Arms)

I would have gone with a different company but didn't know any better at the time. I realize now that the omission of technical differences between theirs and stock is a red flag. But it sounds like I get what I get when I set the Camber anyways, so...

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Thanks again -looks like positioning the camber bolts out/in gives me about +1 camber. My car is sitting a bit high, so I'm going to lower it, following the advice here to decrease the camber. It is tracking much better however.
 
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