[Land-speed] Final SUnbeam Alignment Questions...

Doug Odom dlodom at charter.net
Mon Jun 1 09:50:24 MDT 2009


Mayf, All you really need is a camber/caster gage, flat floor, 2 pieces of 
string and a tape measure. You can do it without a camber/caster gage but it 
is more time and work to use a bubble level to make sure the caster is the 
same on both sides.
I have set cars up like that for years. A friend had an alignment shop and 
would check it for me for free. After the second time he said I was wasting 
my time bringing it down to him at the shop as we never had to change 
anything.

Big ditch Doug


> Thanks to everyone who responded. First I learned a number of things: that 
> camber should be held as close to zero as possible, toe should be a 
> minimum as can be but err on the toe in side with numbers in the range of 
> 1/16 - 1/8 inch total in (never ever toe out! ), Scrub radius needs some 
> as neutral scrub will leave you feel directionless, significant amounts of 
> caster are useful but caster stagger is not, bump steer is to be 
> eliminated.  So those are the targets I am shooting for. Here are 
> remaining two questions
>
> First is what kind of tolerance should a shade tree kinda guy shoot for on 
> the settings? When I look at my old Sunbeam shop manual they give setting 
> sometimes in arc seconds for crying out loud. This was mid sixties. I wont 
> be buying a laser alignment set up lol. So what is generally good on the 
> salt?
>
> And hopefully lastly, thrust angle alignment. There are two components of 
> this, one is rear end angularity or which way is the rear pointed and 
> second is even with perfect perpendicularity, the rear can be off set some 
> (just watch those nascar car!).  Right now, the rear end is as perfectly 
> centered in the frame as I can make it. But with adjustable 4 link it is 
> completely possible to be centered and yet still have a small amount of 
> thrust angle misalignment. I did what I thought was a good job, but how to 
> accutately check the angle? Centering is not all that hard to do.
>
> Comments? Advice?


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