Align your car at home?

[Kern Dog]

The engines and transmissions are offset 1 3/4" to the right side.
I've been able to get identical caster numbers both with offset UCA bushings and with aftermarket UCAs. Sometimes you need to put washers between the knuckle and the lower ball joint. This gives you negative camber which allows you to also get more positive caster.

[Dino]

Yeah washers should get it to even out. I'd love to try more caster though. 6 or 7 degrees and see how it runs.

[Kern Dog]

Mine drives quite well. The return to center is right where I like it. When sitting still, I can turn the wheel and see the front end tilt to one side and then the other as the angle of the wheels change while turning.

[Dino]

How much caster are you running now?

[Kern Dog]

8 degrees. One degree of negative camber and 1/8" of toe IN.
It tracks straight. It feels really stable too. The car just drives beautifully. It is by far the best driving classic car that I have had or driven.
I did find that with stock UCAs and offset bushings, I could get 6 degrees of positive caster. That is actually plenty.

[Dino]

I run the same camber and toe in. 6 degrees would be nice. Maybe the washers could get me there. Do you have the offset bushings in the QA1 UCAs?

[Kern Dog]

No, the QA 1 arms have the standard poly bushings in them.

[Dino]

And you got 8 degrees with just those and some washers? That's impressive.

[Kern Dog]

The washers allowed the negative camber, this also allowed me to get both the camber and caster I wanted. They are both somewhat tied together. You cannot get a lot of caster without camber being affected. When I last had it aligned at a shop, I asked for .75 degree of negative camber and as MUCH caster as they could get. The guy at the desk told me they got the camber where I wanted and were able to get 5 degrees of positive caster on the right and 5.5 on the left. When I checked with the Longacre gauge, I was around 3 1/2 degrees of caster. When I cranked the rear alignment cam IN on the right, I did get the 5 degrees of caster but the camber went away, almost to 1/8 degree or so. This showed me how tied together the two are. If I found a way to add more negative camber, I would also be able to get more caster.
I'd read about the relationship of caster and camber but last year I saw it right in front of me.

[Kern Dog]

Mancini Racing had a listing for the lower ball joint spacers...



I saw a tech question in Mopar Action magazine where Ehrenberg posted a picture that looked like a factory drawing of a steel plate that achieved the same thing. It was news to me a few years ago but was a known fix to the factory guys for 50 plus years!