Alignment..

[bdp1978]

[quote="The Roadie"]I always fiddle with my own camber and caster before it ever sees the shop. Just loosen the three bolts, and shove the LCA mounting bracket inwards until it won't move any more.quote]


Just to clarify, I'm dealing with positive camber so wouldnt I want to shift the plate outward? I almost went for it the other night, however I'm planning on putting on my wheel spacers tonight so I decided to wait and do it all at once.

[The Roadie]

How did you end up with positive camber? I thought all of us who changed our resting height, whether lowered or lifted, ended up with negative camber?

[bdp1978]

How did you end up with positive camber? I thought all of us who changed our resting height, whether lowered or lifted, ended up with negative camber?

Shouldnt everyone lifted end up with positive camber, and those that lower end up with negative camber? That seems to be the general case from what I've read?


Either way, I have positive camber - where the top of the tire is further from the vehicle than the bottom of the tire. So with that data I should need to slide the plate away from the center of the vehicle when adjusting my LCA's. I'll try and take some pics tonight during the process. It's a whopping 30 degrees here so it looks like the rocket heater will be getting fired up in the garage for the spacers and adjustments.

Damn you all in the Southwest!

[fishsticks]

Flipping UCAs causes positive camber... which is something to think about for those people who couldn't originally get their alignment right after lifting.

[Jon A]

has anybody ended up trying their own camber adjustment?

Yes. If you're lifted significantly, you'll probably end up with positive camber from your pre-lift alignment. With much lift, there's no way you can get too much negative camber (hope just to be able to get near zero) so setting it is pretty easy--max it out.

With the front jacked up, I used a High Lift and a block of wood to push the bottoms of the tires outboard. One side was stuck even with the three bolts loosened. With the pressure from the jack it was pretty easy to get a sharp prybar in the holes and push the brackets outboard. Simply push them out as far as they will go and re-tighten the bolts.

After doing this you'll be quite pigeon-toed so you must obviously re-set the toe. Any straight edges can be used as shown above if you're meticulous about it. I use simple toe plates from Longacre that I use on my Camaro.

If it makes you feel better to have it fine tuned/measure with printed specs, go ahead and take it for an alignment. Having done the majority of the work already your chances of them getting it right will have gone up dramatically.

[bdp1978]

Thanks Jon! That is some great info. I began to try this process last night, and spent 30 minutes working on the 3 bolts and couldnt get any of them loose. Impact gun, breaker bar, nothing got them to budge so I started the pentrating oil soakdown and will try again this weekend.