so every time i go for an alignment i am very confident that when i get my truck back i will have the perfect driving vehicle with a much bigger improvement....i am however always wrong

heres my question, what do you guys tell the person aligning your rig EXACTLY. do you just give them the keys, tell them not to beat it on the test drive and throw your dp in the valet tune? or do you give them the low down and tell them how you want it done...

...my buddy (dodge guy) said that he usually tells the guy to give the tires a SLIGHT toe in. that way it will give the steering wheel a much stronger "center" point. which actually made sense, he said if everything else is straight the toe shouldnt wear the tires any differently. he said if the wheels are driving perfectly straight down the road you will have to LITTLE resistants. this made sense to me. i always will remember the time my old man took our subaru to the alignment shop driving like crap, brought it back and it was like a new car, the steering was perfect and had a definate return center posistion.


...so whats the deal. what do i need to say to get this truck where it should be. ever piece on the front my my truck is new suspension wise. i just built my 4" lift, new shocks, new hubs, new rods. new steering box dual steering stabilizers. new pitman arm. and it drives like crap all over the road.

..i put 170 miles on my truck a day so it bugs the crap out of me. it also bugs me that every time i get it aligned they get done and said they got the steering wheel as close as possible. i get in and its still tilted. yo pal, i just paid you 125 bucks, i want it straight because thats what i paid for.

sorry for the rant but im fed up with these heavy duty alignemnt truck shops doing crap jobs.

 

I don't tell the guy anything because I have no idea how to do his job. I do watch and ride with him on the test drive.

This is a bump Phil.

 

I could use a little help, too... my camber is supposedly off 1* on the right side, but I'm told this shouldn't affect steering. However, it still pulls to the left on a slanted road! I can't take my hands off the wheel for anything... gets old and I drive this thing alot, just like like Phil.

SUBSCRIBED!!!

Oh, and I can't get anybody to balance my tires right, either... it's bad!

 

Be sure you're at a decent alignment shop with trained technicians. Ask them what the factory specs are for toe, camber, and caster. With more caster and negative camber, you can get away with less toe. Read some websites with alignment info, so you know what all these things are. Many shops (mine) won't guarantee alignments on lifted trucks, but will 'do the best they can'. The shop I use usually sets a bit less toe on my solid axle trucks, if they have a fair amount of camber and caster. Too much toe-in (or out) just wears tires, but a little is usually needed to keep the truck tracking straight on the road.

There is no excuse for a crooked steering wheel, and I pay $50 for an alignment at a great shop. I think you need a new shop. Be sure you tell the shop exactly what your concerns/problems are, and how they can address them. Also be sure they do a visual and physical inspection before starting the alignment.

 

I'll give the last place credit for telling me about the camber... or even mentioning the caster. He said it was good, but not as good as it could've been. Camber is pricey to fix so I'm gonna give them a shot at getting the camber right and then really put the effort into getting the rest of it right.

 

Phil, the only thing that comes to mind is ball joints. You didn't mention how old yours were. Bad ball joints will make a fresh alignment pointless.

 

as mentioned make sure you go to a shop that knows what they are doing. we do alot of alignments at my shop and we even print out before and after with the factory specs to show you how everything is. something to keep in mind is the front end may be tight, but if there is some slop in the gearbox, it will be hard to get the wheal straight. sometimes you may have to pay extra to adjust the slop out of the gearbox.
There is also alot of human error that can go on during an alignment, the steering wheal is locked into position with a holder, and it is up to the tech to determine what "straight" is. lifting a solid axle truck is really going to screw with your caster, and it is a combination of camber and caster that make SAI wich is what really effects how well the wheal "returns" to center.
Make sure that you have the proper adjustor kits installed, this will cost xtra and some shops don't like to do them so they tell you they cant adjust, this is a lie. I believe dodge with the dana 60 is the only one that can not adjust camber and caster.
Hope this helps.

 

just wanted to add, a truck that is lifted too high or with the wrong parts may not be able to get adjustors to make up for the lift. this is why most shops do not honor the alignment warranty on lifted/off road trucks, TBC stores however are supposed to honor all alignment warranties except if stated differently at the time of the purchase. TBC includes BIG-O-TIRES, NTB, and a few others, but I wark at an NTB and did not really bother to learn all of our other stores.

 

When I test drove my truck it pulled to the right when you let go of the wheel. So as part of the agreement when I bought it they would do an alignment on it. So I scheduled a time to bring it back and get it done. He tells me it was "in spec" so he didn't touch anything. It still pulled to the right. So I took it home and did myself. It may not be perfect but it tracks straight. I use 2 coffee cans, a piece of 1/2 pipe and 1/2 rod, pair of vise-grips. You place one coffee can on the inside of the front of each tire. Slide the rod inside the pipe and place it on the coffee cans, sliding the rod out until it contacts the tires at the same spot. Use the vise-grips to lock the rod from sliding in the pipe. Now place the coffee cans on the inside of the rear of the tires. Place the pipe and rod on the cans and see how much of a gap there is from the rod to the tire. I set it at about 1/8". Tracks good and tires don't wear to bad. I know it may not be the professional way but it works. My dad showed it to me on my first truck and I have done this on TTB F150's, A-arm F-150 plus my SD. Obviously I'm not checking camber or caster, but better then nothing.

 

lots of good info here guys, thanks. im going to have to do some serisous reading online to know my talk before i go again. as peter said i do prob need ball joints. there old, bottoms are greasable and tops arent??? i don tknow if there replaced or not. thats a riff raff 2012 job. thanks for all the input.

..i hope this thread helps someone else that comes to the site with my same question

 

For the truck, I just tell them to align to Ford's specs. I do tell them to check the ball joints while the truck is on the rack. Easy to quantify how much deflection there are in the ball joints than to try and guess at how much or how little is out of spec with your eyes.

A little Toe in is normal spec for front wheels on almost all road going vehicles for the reason you mentioned. Many alignment shops also dial in 1/2* more caster on the passenger side front wheel to correct for road crown and help keep the vehicle from pulling to the right.


As duck fan mentioned, it could be the ball joints. Given you've changed everything else, I'd probably say to go and get your ball joints checked by a respectable, honest place - or check them yourself too.

However, wide tires also play a role. The wider the tire, the more they get affected by ruts and follow abnormalities.


Yeah, that would **** me off too. Thankfully around here, I have a few good alignment choices. Alignment really is a job where the person is the most important aspect of it. If they don't care or think that "close enough" is OK, then you'll get a crap alignment. If they know what they are doing and invest the time to do it perfect, you'll get much better results.

Just getting all variables "in spec" isn't good enough. The left and ride should be exactly the same or within very little tolerance - like a couple of tenths of a degree.

 

good post AMG, thanks, im reading online right now. give me another hour im going to go buy my own alignment rack and equip LOL

 

1 degree of camber difference side to side is significant and needs to be corrected. A couple of tenths of degree is not a big deal. Generally a significant CASTER difference is going to make it pull one way or another as well.

 

Let me help you out.

Tool to check Toe (easy to make your own):
https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/pr...asp?RecID=5124
Obviously, its hard to measure 4 wheel toe relative to each axle aka Thrust Angle with this cheapo tool.

Tools to check camber:
https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/gr...ID=ALIGNCAMBER

Problem is that you now how to figure out how to monkey around with the suspension to get use those tools to measure.
That's the part that I don't know...

 

we talking about a super duty?
so super duty specs 02 camber both sides, 3.5 left caster 3.8 right caster and total toe of 10, the great thing about super duty’s is no matter the lift within reason 4 in 6 in you can always get to factory , the question is how skilled is your tech and how much eork are they willing to do, super duty alignments require quite a bit of work and more than a basic understanding of the alignment machine, I love doing them, now anything greater that a .5 difference between sides on camber or caster will have a tendency to pull, a positive camber with a negative camber will pull to the positive side,, when I do them I remove factory sleeves and replace with 0 degree sleeves , this provides a highly accurate baseline for the bushing calculator, things to expect, extra charges for alignment you’ll have to pay for the sleeves and maybe labor for install,