Alignment - Am I missing something?

D

dustinmj

New member
Or did they not do what I asked them to? :confused:

I took my truck back to the shop this week to get the 'squirliness' taken care of... and I asked for Before and After alignment shots... I got only this, go figure. I want to go back tomorrow and let them know I'm not OK with the caster angle, but I wanted to verify with someone more 'alignmentally inclined' than I am.

I think I'm seeing that the caster was not adjusted correctly... the rears look maxed and fronts weren't even touched... am I wrong? :hiding:
 

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Do you have before/after specs and before/after pics of the adjusters?

Most of your positive caster comes from the rear adjusters pushing the rear of the LCA outward, which your adjusters appear to be in.

If I had to guess, you have raised your static ride height considerably above stock and are using stock UCAs. Even with a competent and motivated alignment tech (rare), you will be on the low end of OEM specs, at best. If you have more than a very slight increase in ride height, you are going to need aftermarket UCAs to get a good alignment.
 
Jeremy556 said:
Do you have before/after specs and before/after pics of the adjusters?

Most of your positive caster comes from the rear adjusters pushing the rear of the LCA outward, which your adjusters appear to be in.
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I don't have any before shots and the numbers is what the shop have me today. Am i correct in assuming, then, that this is as good as it gets until i can afford UCAs? I was under the impression that <3* could get closer to spec...
 
dustinmj said:
I don't have any before shots and the numbers is what the shop have me today. Am i correct in assuming, then, that this is as good as it gets until i can afford UCAs? I was under the impression that <3* could get closer to spec...
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If they spent a lot of time, they might get a few more tenth's out of it, but I doubt it is possible to get good caster numbers with that setup without moving the upper joint rearward (UCAs).
 
Here's the deal, not all lifts do the same thing. What I mean by that is that yes you get 1~3" of suspension lift, but various other aspects are affected in unpredictable ways.

For example I used to have SPC UCAs on my 4th gen and I FOUGHT to get the 5~5.5* of Caster I needed to pull the wheel away for clearance when running 35's. My SAI (Steering Axis Inclination) was just way out of whack and my cams were maxed out all ways and my camber was closer to 1* positive (though within spec). After an accident on the trails I upgraded to a set of Camburg Kinetik Uniball UCAs that have spacers to get either 3* or 5* Caster from the get go(the SPCs allow upto an additional 3~4* compensation over stock when maxed if I remember right), what shocked me was just how ridiculously easy adjusting the vehicle to it's current 6.1* Caster and -0.5* Camber was (barely played with the cams) and my SAI was within spec.

Why do I mention this? Well, we commonly throw Revtek spacer lifts (sometimes some ProComp coilover stuff on the Tundras) on our Tundra, Tacoma, and 4Runners at my dealer and on some of them, the best you can do is to get Camber within spec and balance Caster. That's what it looks like they did, it was either get Caster within spec and have Camber way out and chew up your tires, or put the wear angle within spec and balance Caster which doesn't wear tires and might induce some wander.

My guess is that the lift your running, with factory UCAs is just moving the angles around too much to reliably compensate with what's left of the stock geometry (i.e. Stock LCA, Stock UCA, and Stock Spindle).
 
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Yea, you want the rear as far outboard and the front as far inboard as possible. But pulling the front in will start to go positive on camber, so you can only go so far...

I know there are lots of people here posting they run stock UCAs with lifts with no issues... and you don't technically need them if you can tolerate the twitchy feel, but I've never know anyone locally that has been able to tolerate stock UCAs with a lift for very long.
 
I really, really appreciate the detailed responses. Guess there's not much more they can do currently.

So guess it's on me to decide if I'm good with the wander or if I'm going to drop a ton on UCAs.

Is the ride at 4 deg+ really that much better? 1k better?
 
dustinmj said:
I really, really appreciate the detailed responses. Guess there's not much more they can do currently.

So guess it's on me to decide if I'm good with the wander or if I'm going to drop a ton on UCAs.

Is the ride at 4 deg+ really that much better? 1k better?
Click to expand...

It depends on what you mean... The problem is that you go from "Squirrely" to "Sensitive" pretty easily.

What I mean is that at lower camber your wheels are gonna feel like they're darting randomly like a shopping cart down a parking lot. The more positive caster you go, the more responsive, but sensitive your steering gets. What I mean by that is that you feel better turn-in control and direction, but you'll also feel the road a bit more and may even notice the vehicle wants to follow imperfections a bit more (the issue gets a bit exaggerated with wider tires.)

The difference is that when you experience "Squirrely" steering the vehicle doesn't feel stable and almost like it wants to just dart from under your control. When it's "Sensitive" you'll notice it want to maybe pull slightly one way or another as it follows imperfections in the road (i.e. it might drift a bit left on a road crowned to drain towards the left and then drift a bit right when the road crown switches), but on a flat level road it will drive fine. All vehicles will tend to follow crown and differences in caster, but the higher you go on your caster the more noticeable it may become.

I notice a lot of people who's vehicles are lifted and often complain that they don't get the hub-bub about shooting for 4* of Caster haven't learned the difference between the steering being squirrely and it being sensitive. Conversely a lot of people don't seem to realize that even if your alignment is dead perfect, the vehicle will follow road imperfections, it's about the difference between a "slight drift" towards a road crown and a "big dog yanking on a leash" towards a road crown. :)

Post Note-

If I'm not explaining things right and/or correct please correct me. ;)
 
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Seattle206 said:
$500 will get you a good set of UCA's. C'mon you can afford that TRD Pro garnish ;)
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This made me laugh :-)

Looking at the total chaos UCA kit I'm in $700 without install/alignment and train to nowhere tax...

I don't want to buy something that's going to go downhill in a couple years...

I do think I'd rather have 'sensitive' vs 'squirrelly', though I may be mentally exaggerating the extent of the squirreliness...

Still gotta convince the Mrs, and the budget!
 
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