Quote:
Originally Posted by Carmen Black
After buying a perfectly good running truck, I decided I needed to replace the front springs which the PO had cut down to the point they rattled in their pockets. That turned into this.
So after replacing everything but the engine and the sheet metal, I finally made an appointment for the alignment shop. I chose Merchants Tire because it was 2 miles from my house, and I was worried about having a problem with the truck or dragging the non-aligned tires since it hadn't been out of garage in 9 months.
Well the guy at the shop types the VIN number into a handheld computer. The VIN doesn't come up so he just looks at me and says he can't help me.
I ask him what he is talking about and he says if my truck isn't in the computer, he doesn't know how to align it. The he says that my truck probably has shims. I say yes, its probably got a 1/2 inch of shims on each side. He looked at me like I just fell out of the sky. So I just got back in my truck and left.
The good news is the truck ran great and didn't really feel out of alignment. I kept all the shims together that came out of the truck so I could put them back in and pulled the tie rods out as an assembly so that I could match the length of the new MOOG parts and it drove surprisingly well.
It was really nice weather today and I really wanted to get back on the road.
I just didn't think someone had to have a computer tell them how to do an alignment. I guess I have to find some old timer shop to make this happen.
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Make sure you have 1/16" toe-in before you drive it back to the shop. Use a tape measure, have a friend hang it on the tread and measure the front as high as you can without hitting the frame, and do the same on the backside of the tire hanging the tape exactly the same. Do it two or three times to make sure you duplicate the measuring the same front of the front tires to the rear of the front tires. It's not perfect, but might save some tread. Every time you adjust it, roll it backwards a foot or two then back forward for a re-measurement.
You can also "rough in" the camber by parking on a flat pavement then using a large "L" square laying on the ground, measure the top and bottom of the rim lips from any given point and not the differences. Lay it out on a sheet of cardboard then use a protractor to see what the camber angle is. Again, every time you adjust it roll it back a foot or two and back forward before measuring it again.
I don't have any shade tree way to set the caster, I'd just concentrate on using equal shims when adjusting camber on the upper control arms to retain whatever caster it has in it.
Maybe someone else can chime in on shade-tree caster LOL. I've had nothing but bad luck with dealership alignment techs, I've had good luck with "alignment only" businesses, particularly private owned not franchise.
Some interesting links on the subject for DIY.
http://www.stangnet.com/mustang-foru...-gauge.534269/
http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/susp...alignment.html