Midyear Alignment

[Steven A.]

I took my 66 Coupe to a local alignment shop in the hopes of setting up the front end the way I've seen discussed by Duke and others in various posts (i.e. 1 to 2 degrees of caster, 0 to 1 degree neg camber and 1/16th in. of toe). The tecnician is someone I know and trust and he was willing to spend the time with me to do this. All went pretty well, except that the maximum amount of caster we were able to achieve and leave some reasonable number of threads available on the back bolt was about 0.75 degree positive. We were able to retain a little negative camber, without any shimming on the front bolt.

Before we started the driver's side actually had a degree of so of negative caster.

Both sides now have about the same shimming (none in the front, and a bunch in the back--sorry that's not very scientific). The car drives straight and feels good. I'm not really worried about doing anything else to it. However, I'm just curious how one would get up to another degree of camber. At least on my car, this looks impossible.

[Duke W.]

Re: Midyear Alignment

The nominal caster for 1963 is 1.75 degrees (might vary slightly for other years), so this should be attainable with nominal shimming. The fact that your initial caster reading was negative indicates a problem - bent or mis-installed components.

The control arms are side specific, and reversing them will probably alter the available caster range. Are yours correctly installed? I know I intentionally reversed the upper control arms on my Cosworth Vega to experiment with "very high caster settings" (It didn't work - great turn-in response, but enough kickback to damned near break your arms.)

Duke

[Steven A.]

Re: Midyear Alignment

Thanks, Duke. I looked at that and they appear to be oriented correctly, but I'm just basing this on photos of other cars. Is there an easy way to tell?

[Duke W.]

Re: Midyear Alignment

I don't have a loose upper control arm handy for close inspection, but the
pivot axis is mounted at an angle relative to the ground plan for 50 percent anti-dive geometry. Because of this the mounting plane for the ball joint
is at an angle to the pivot axis. This is why each side is different - essentially mirror images.

The knuckle should appear approximately normal to the ball joint mounting plane. If not, the control arms could be reversed.

I recall there has been some discussion on the orientation of the pivot shaft, but on my SWC they appear to be symmetrical both along their length and width, so the orientation appears to be arbitrary.

Duke

[Steven A.]

Re: Midyear Alignment

Duke: Can you put that into layman's terms. I'm just a neophyte.

[Duke W.]

Re: Midyear Alignment

I don't know how else to explain it. Perhaps someone else can. My other
thought is that if the car ever took a good hit in the wheel the upper control
arm mounting bracket or frame might be bent, but in that case the available caster range would probably be different side to side.

Duke

[James W.]

Re: Midyear Alignment

Steve,

You are welcome to come over and look at my '64 convertible to verify your control arm installation. Email me at jwest@oppd.com or jb.west@cox.net and I'll give you my home and work phone numbers.

Regards,

James West
Omaha, NE.