Caster adjustment not necessary?

[Be_Original]

I replaced my UCA's and decided to have Hibdon Tires perform my alignment since I have a full year of unlimited alignments. I was hoping that when I picked up my vehicle the next day all my angles would be in spec. Well, it seems to me in the printout that my caster adjustment is out of spec. When I confronted the service advisor about this he immediately caught an attitude, I kept my calm. He said that because I have a lift installed it is not necessary to adjust caster unless it is +/- .5 degrees apart from each other. He also said that if they were to adjust it to spec it would bring my front end down. This confused me, can someone clarify this please. Thanks in advance. Sorry for the sideways pic.

 

[preacher35]

I replaced my UCA's and decided to have Hibdon Tires perform my alignment since I have a full year of unlimited alignments. I was hoping that when I picked up my vehicle the next day all my angles would be in spec. Well, it seems to me in the printout that my caster adjustment is out of spec. When I confronted the service advisor about this he immediately caught an attitude, I kept my calm. He said that because I have a lift installed it is not necessary to adjust caster unless it is +/- .5 degrees apart from each other. He also said that if they were to adjust it to spec it would bring my front end down. This confused me, can someone clarify this please. Thanks in advance. Sorry for the sideways pic.
View attachment 155914

First, what kind of lift do you have on your Runner? Second, the alignment guys is incorrect about the caster adjustment not being needed. That being said, if you have a suspension lift at or near the 3" mark, caster is going to be damned difficult to get into spec WITHOUT the benefit of aftermarket UCA's. Out of spec caster will cause your Runner's steering to behave a little funny.

 

[Be_Original]

First, what kind of lift do you have on your Runner? Second, the alignment guys is incorrect about the caster adjustment not being needed. That being said, if you have a suspension lift at or near the 3" mark, caster is going to be damned difficult to get into spec WITHOUT the benefit of aftermarket UCA's. Out of spec caster will cause your Runner's steering to behave a little funny.

Preacher, I have bilstein 5100's all around. Front set at 2.5. Along with that I have 4WD FJ Cruiser coils all around with daystar 1.5" spacers in the rear. I do have aftermarket Built Right UCA's. The reason for purchasing them was to eliminate the darting, sloppy steering and the caster. The darting and sloppy steering seem to have gone away, but ai only drove it a couple miles so far.

 

[Xanderith]

Your caster affects steering, low caster makes it easy to turn while higher caster increases steering effort. Typically for most vehicles you want to have ~0.5 degree cross caster to compensate for road crown.

 

[Be_Original]

Your caster affects steering, low caster makes it easy to turn while higher caster increases steering effort. Typically for most vehicles you want to have ~0.5 degree cross caster to compensate for road crown.

Thanks forn the input. So by looking at my after measurements, would you say it looks to be correct? I did read in another thread that positive caster is ideal (+4.0-4.5 degrees) to allow for larger tires, yet I see many members after installing UCA's have all angles in spec. This I think is what confuses me, what is right and what is wrong.

 

[BlackWorksInc]

This sounds like miscommunication to me, your measurements actually look really good (despite the Caster being in the "Red.)

Typically most people get aftermarket UCA to allow for more Caster after they lift a J120/J150 platform vehicle because the factory cams max out around 4° (at which point the Camber typically gets way out of specification as well.) The UCA allow you to dial in the Caster around 4° or higher, which reduces wandering and gives better turn in on a lifted 4Runner, FJ, ect. Keep in mind that those measurements are designed for a 100% stock 4Runner of a specific trim and wheel/tire size, when you modify the vehicle you need to accept that some of those measurements need to be adjusted/tweaked to compensate for your modifications (i.e. gaining more caster to bring wandering down on a lifted 4Runner with larger/heavier tires for example.)

Perhaps the service representative was trying to say that while it's in the "Red" your Caster measurements are actually good for a lifted 4Runner with a left/right biased under ±0.5°

Post Note-

I haven't seen an alignment shop set their machine to standard units of measurement for Toe before, it's a bit weird. lol

 

[Be_Original]

This sounds like miscommunication to me, your measurements actually look really good (despite the Caster being in the "Red.)

Typically most people get aftermarket UCA to allow for more Caster after they lift a J120/J150 platform vehicle because the factory cams max out around 4° (at which point the Camber typically gets way out of specification as well.) The UCA allow you to dial in the Caster around 4° or higher, which reduces wandering and gives better turn in on a lifted 4Runner, FJ, ect. Keep in mind that those measurements are designed for a 100% stock 4Runner of a specific trim and wheel/tire size, when you modify the vehicle you need to accept that some of those measurements need to be adjusted/tweaked to compensate for your modifications (i.e. gaining more caster to bring wandering down on a lifted 4Runner with larger/heavier tires for example.)

Perhaps the service representative was trying to say that while it's in the "Red" your Caster measurements are actually good for a lifted 4Runner with a left/right biased under ±0.5°

Post Note-

I haven't seen an alignment shop set their machine to standard units of measurement for Toe before, it's a bit weird. lol

I was waiting for you to chime in! Haha. So I beleive this is why the guy was looking at me like a dumba**. The first thing he asked was if it had a lift, then explained that the caster is in spec and needed no further adjustment. It makes sense now that the angles are set for factory suspension and not for a modified suspension rendering the factory spec angles somewhat useless. On a side note, this particular shop does alignments for a local off road shop. In the little bit of miles I have driven the steering responsiveness has seemed to improve.

 

[ebg18t]

I don't see anything there that would concern me, that is better than most alignments posted. Drive it and enjoy.

 

[Sungod]

I haven't seen an alignment shop set their machine to standard units of measurement for Toe before, it's a bit weird. lol

It is very common to measure toe in inches. The reason being is that prior to fancy equipment toe was measured with a tape measure. It is also a common way of measuring at the track.