theiceman

Well I decided after fixing the parking brake it was time to go out again .. I took it to my brothers Ford dealership and he let me check my alignment settings on his machine. I was wondering if someone could comment if these settings are okay or if I should have them adjusted. I do not track the car and would just like the tires to last as long as they can with a bit of decent handling , that said this is what I printed out.

LF camber -.23
LF caster 5.76
LF toe .10
RF camber -.41
RFcaster 5.29
RF toe 0.09
LR camber -.83
LR toe .10
RR camber -.76
RR Toe 0.08

Any comments ?

ice

Peter Zimmermann

ice: Those numbers actually aren't that bad. Your caster is a little low, but they always are. Toe is generally set at zero front & rear, which gives the car a little more straight line stability at Interstate speeds (a touch of toe out makes the car better on turn in for track use). Front camber is usually set at zero also, but a little bit of negative never hurts, especially if the car is lowered. Rear camber is good, if you re-set it try to get 1 degree negative and zero toe on the rear. All in all, for street driving, you're probably OK unless you want to fine tune the car.
Pete

theiceman

Thanks Pete

I think I will leave everything as is if it looks okay . I don't track the car and usually just cruise around on weekends.

Thanks Pete

Edward

Hey iceman,

Well Pete said it for me, and he's the one that really knows!

The bottom line is you've got a very conservative alignment ...great if you want to maximize tire life. As I'm sure you know, handling/tire wear is a compromise. If you want a bit better turn-in bite and the rear a bit more planted, you could dial in more negative camber on both ends ...about -1.2f and -1.5r would help quite a bit. It won't accelerate tire wear by much as long as you keep the toe on the conservative side, as yours is (say 1/16" total toe in). Hope this helps.

Edward

dsmith

technically, you should have a slight pull to the right based on your right side caster being less. i doubt you'll notice it with the toe in. nothing on your current alignment will wear tires, so changing anything but toe would just be a hassle. drive it for 10k miles and recheck.

btw, did you get the toe that close w/o alignment after replacing the tie rods (iirc)?
david

TonyG

Negative camber and tire wear are not much of an issue if you simply rotate (swap - left/right) the tires a couple of times through their life span.


TonyG

SeattlePorsche

Ice,

Two things that are cool:
1) That you got a brother with an alignment rack, and that you know how to use it.

2) That you got the toe that good right off the bat. How did you do it?

Question for you: You know that nut at the end of the tie rod (towards the hook up with the control arm)? Are you supposed to tighten this down? I just took a 22mm wrench and tightened it as hard as I could, since I didn't see how I was gonna put a torque wrench on it.

theiceman

I guess I am just lucky. I used my 4 jack stand and some string and just ran it down the sides of the car at about the middle of the wheel . It is easy to tell if you have toe in/ out problems as the front and back of the wheel don't touch the string together, the trick is keeping an eye on the steering wheel as I had no way to really lock it where I wanted to. . I just lined it up more or less straight. I also parked it on 2 pools of washing up liquid at the front so the tires would turn easier as I made the adjustment ..don't know if it helped but it made cleaning up my oil leaks on the garage floor pretty easy :-)
I was not surprised the camber and caster were fairly close as I didn't do much to affect them.

The nut at the end of the tie rod is a " pinch bolt " . don't do it too tight as this will make it impossible to get off after a few seasons. I had to do this on my Audi and chewed the tie rod up getting it off. You make your toe adjustments by holding the tie rod end still while udoing this nut.. and then turning the tie rod between the tie rod and and the steering rack for the adjustment ( that is why it has a flat spot on it ) . after you have your adjustments you tighten that nut to stop the tie rod from turning on its own and changing the adjustment or falling off.Although it has to be tight, as tight as you can go seems too tight. If you are getting an alignment anyway just snug it up and the dudes at the alignment shop will tighten it.

But as far as the torque wrench goes ( and I am sure no body uses one for this , would a crows foot with a torque wrench give good values ?? hmmm....

ice